


Redemption

by Potboy



Series: A Singular Jedi [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story owes its inspiration to Eshva's 'When did the light die?' in which she suggests that Obi-Wan's Trial might have been to allow Qui-Gon to die, so that the training of the Chosen One could be in the hands of a more orthodox member of the Order.</p><p>        I noticed that this followed a theme of Trials in the SW universe. Luke's trial was to kill his father, Vader. Xanatos' trial was to choose between his father, Crion, and the Order, Obi-Wan's was to choose between his Master and the Order. We were both very uncomfortable with the idea of anyone passing a trial like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redemption

It was distasteful, but it was the only way, Obi-Wan thought as he sighted along the barrel of his laser-rifle. From the outcropping of flint on which he lay he could look down directly into the landing site, or out into swells of purple forest. Above him the blocky length of a Republic cruiser turned and began floating, autumnally, to the ground. Hidden in the trees around the clearing, glimpses of highly polished armour caught the sun, betraying five native, reptilian guards to his keen observation.

Just as he picked out the last his comlink buzzed and Anakin's incongruously deep voice said, "The guards are asleep, and the Cortosis Field is in place, Master."

"Are you sure it will hold? Check again."

"Master, I think I know by now how to set up a field generator."

Their conversations always made him feel accused, and now, right now, he didn't need that. "This is important, my Padawan. Do as I say."

Obi-Wan could almost see - could certainly picture - the tightened jaw, the deliberate breathing and recovery before Anakin replied "Yes, Master." Why must the boy make everything so difficult? Why must he behave as if taking an order was like gnawing off his own leg? And why did he have to be difficult today? Today, when Obi-Wan felt so very vulnerable.

This backwards world's one spaceport was nothing more than a sheet of rock, turned glacier smooth by the firestorm rockets of their primitive craft, and even this was considered so ritually impure as to be deserted. Only a nervous emissary of the Priest-King - air downwash ruffling the feathers of his headdress - would witness what was about to happen. And, if all went to plan, he would remember it only as a mystery.

 _For the survival of the Order and the Republic,_ he thought as the ship settled gently to the ground. One of its supports came down on clear glass, and there was a ringing, as if someone had struck ten thousand crystal goblets.

The note sliced through his exposed nerves like a lightsabre; he could feel again the red blade as it drove into his leg. He saw blood on the Arena, the dead bodies of a hundred Jedi slaughtered like cattle on the sand; Anakin reeling backwards, falling, maimed for his sake. And the Army of the Republic, an army whose very existence filled him with horror, mowed down droids, let the real culprit get away.

Running lights dimmed. A crack of illumination showed, widening as the door drew back and the ramp extended. The emissary smoothed his feathers, and a shadow moved inside the ship, blocking the light with the heavy, graceful swing of a Jedi cloak.

 _None of it will ever have happened,_ Obi-Wan told himself, determination like steel in his bones. _There will be no Separatist movement, no massacre. It will never happen._

Why else had the Council discovered a way to travel into the past? Why else had the Force brought him to this moment? He was going to redeem the future, and buy back all those lives, with the price of one man... Count Dooku.

Stopping at the top of the ramp, Dooku took down his hood. Force! He was young! The pale, bladelike face was almost more sinister beneath ebony hair, the trimmed black beard outlined a mouth that already looked cruel. His eyes, dark as his cloak, were smiling with all the sincerity with which he had told Obi-Wan how truly he wanted to help.

 _I don't hate him,_ Obi-Wan's exhaled breath was shaky. _I am not taking revenge,_ he levelled the gun, sights arrowed onto the unblemished skin of the Sith's forehead. _I am not killing a man,_ he held down panic, fear, a twinge of guilty yearning, and turned them into calm. _I am cutting out a cancer._

He pulled the trigger. Green energy blazed from the barrel of the rifle and tore at near lightspeed across the clearing. The small figure of Dooku reached for his lightsabre, swung nonchalantly into a perfect defence, flicking the igniter button. And there was no blade.

Not wasting time with surprise - the man was good! - Dooku hurled himself backwards. The first bolt went over his head, but Obi-Wan had anticipated that, following the diving figure with shot after shot. _Let's see you twist your way out of this!_

Now others had started to move - the emissary running for the trees, the pilot, a startled blue shape in the cockpit window, slamming controls. The ramp began to raise, repulsors whining as the ship fought gravity. _He must *not* get away!_ Obi-Wan intensified the barrage, and Dooku stumbled.

A moment of epiphany as a burning bolt crashed into the traitor's shoulder, spinning him around. The next would take out the back of his head. _It's done!_

But then there was a blur of movement. Dooku's body jerked back like a Force-Pushed droid - blast just grazing his cheek, singeing his beard.

 _No._ Obi-Wan whispered - he had taken pains to make sure this would not happen. He had _arranged_ things. This must not happen!

The last shots screamed in to impact. There was no gap in them, no space of safety to which even the most agile Master might leap. One of those bolts _would_ hit, and the shock of contact with a second dose of molten plasma _would_ kill Dooku, unless...

Calmly, deliberately, the young man who had rushed with Force-assisted speed to Dooku's side stepped in front of his Master and took the searing bolt in his own stomach.

_Oh Force, no!_

Recoil sent both men sprawling. Dooku, apparently unconscious, crumpled and slid into the airlock. High enough for escape, the fleeing ship yawed as it circled. Hitting the moving metal, curled in agony, the youth rolled, pitched over the edge of the ramp and fell like ditched cargo - headfirst onto a landing strut, then, as that retracted, five metres onto the vitrified ground.

_Oh gods!_

Obi-Wan leapt down from his perch even as Anakin burst from the trees. They arrived at the body together.

"What have you _done_!" Anakin's accusation - disrespectful as it was - only mirrored his own thoughts.

"They said he wouldn't be here! They said they'd order him to stay behind!" _And you honestly believed he'd obey them?_

Obi-Wan checked the neck and spine before rolling the youth over, looking with a kind of awe at this man who was little older than Anakin - seeing the blood, the dirt, the broken, boneless sprawl.

It was Anakin who took the pulse. Obi-Wan's heart was too erratic and his fingers too numb with shock. _Oh Force, Qui-Gon. Oh gods... I've let Dooku get away, and I've killed Qui-Gon._

* * *

It wasn't safe to pour any more energy into the trance. Obi-Wan could feel the core of his own body cooling as he sent a torrent of healing force into Qui-Gon's form. Indeed he was foolish to have gone this far; to leave himself shaking and lightheaded and impaired, when Dooku was still out there to be dealt with.

Obi-Wan didn't want to put a name to the desperation he felt. Whatever it was, it could not be appropriate for a Jedi. _I should be calm and focussed. I should be..._

Anakin came in from the small kitchen at the other side of the salon pod and placed a mug of juice in front of him. A delicate, haunted silence hung about the Padawan's aura. "I thought I'd tune the hyperdrive, Master. I know the input valves aren't correctly aligned."

Anakin's mouth was sullen and his head bent, almost pressed down. When Obi-Wan picked up the cup, he shied away, as if expecting a blow.

 _What does he think I am?!_ the flinch grieved Obi-Wan further, _Does he really think I'm the kind of man who would strike out at innocents, just because I'm hurting?_ "Make sure you keep it functional," he said, collectedly as he could, "We may need it."

As Anakin left, Obi-Wan checked the medical readouts again. They were not good. Though broken bones had knit, Qui-Gon's heartbeat was still faltering and erratic. Pain read scarlet on the monitor, but other brain activity was minimal. The massive, livid burn across his abdomen, obscene as it had looked at first, had stabilized under Obi-Wan and Anakin's ministrations, but it seemed - no matter what they did - he could not recover from the impact of the fall.

Reluctantly, Obi-Wan's gaze was drawn from the instruments to his Master's face. _I don't want to watch you die again, Qui-Gon._ How jarring to see him young - smooth cheek boyishly curved, the unlined eyes giving him a look of astonishing innocence. In convulsions, earlier, before he slipped into this icy, almost sleep, his long braid had wrapped around his neck. It lay there still, a stroke of ink against his pallor.

Qui-Gon's arm had slipped off the pallet and dangled uncomfortably. Obi-Wan remembered with goring nostalgia how they never had made standard sleep couches big enough for him. Making sure that Anakin was not watching him, he picked the cool hand up and tucked it back under the blanket.

* * *

"Complicates things, this does." The small, hologrammatic Council sat on the control panel, reflecting like cold flame in the reinforced window.

Obi-Wan massaged his forehead, aching with the expenditure of too much Force energy, and the suppression of too many thoughts. A bark of humourless laughter betrayed his turmoil to the watching Masters. "Oh, we've certainly changed the future."

Anakin, who had finished his tinkering and taken over the healing trance a half hour ago, slid quietly out of the salon pod and collapsed into a chair just outside the transmitter pick-up. He looked bowed, subdued. Obi-Wan's heart clenched with fear at the sight. "Anakin?"

"No, it's alright, Master. I just..." the dark voice was full of weariness, but beneath it lay a more ominous strain, as if his Padawan were a samisen with the strings too tightly tuned, pulling itself apart for the sake of a pure note. "Just needed to take a break."

"What damage will Padawan Jinn's death do?" Only Yoda was familiar to Obi-Wan on the earlier version of the Council. This speaker was a man at the end of a very long life, prematurely mummified by the dryness of his own spirit.

"To us personally?" Dispassion was easy to feign before them - they didn't know him well enough to read the signs of anger. "I will become a worker in Agricorps and Anakin will remain a slave on Tatooine. Otherwise..."

He half registered Anakin's glare, the mouth compressed from holding back some outburst. Oh yes, his Padawan did hate to be reminded of that. "Otherwise, I don't know. Certainly, if he lives, it won't stop the threat against the Republic, or save a single Jedi on Geonosis."

The withered man - Master Starthief, if Obi-Wan remembered correctly - nodded to indicate a decision had been made. "Bringing Jinn to the Healers invites discovery, and more temporal paradox than this Temple can easily endure. Keeping him there, he will act as bait, drawing Master Dooku to you, enabling you to carry out your mission."

"I understand." After all, it was the rational decision, the choice he would have made himself if his judgement had not been clouded by emotion. Compared with the threat of Republic civil war, of what worth _was_ his future, or Anakin's, or any one life? "I will contact you again when I have news of Dooku."

"Regret, I do, so much promise, lost."

For a breathless moment Obi-Wan allowed himself to hope Yoda had found another solution, but for once he failed expectation. "A great sacrifice this is. Commend you we do."

"We live to serve."

* * *

"I don't _believe_ you!" Typically of Anakin, he was making this moment worse with his undisciplined, emotional response. As he stepped forward Obi-Wan felt almost physically threatened.

"Anakin, I know it's hard to give up your dreams of knighthood..."

All the planes of Anakin's face went immobile as stone and the blue eyes brightened, raging like the Northern Lights.

_What did I say?_

"You don't get it at all, do you? When my mom died I..." An attempt at controlled breathing. Anakin's gaze broke away, glowered at the space where the ghost Council had sat, leaving Obi-Wan feeling as if he had been released from a malevolent spell. Force! As if everything wasn't bad enough without his Padawan beginning to scare him too.

"And I thought you'd understand, but you..." The face creased, and the bitter flame of eyes were clouded with _tears?_ "You're so perfect. Serenity before passion and anything, anything at all before love. That's your - your _father_ in there, and you don't give a...you don't care! How am I supposed to learn from you when I don't even know what you are?"

"Anakin!" Not for the first time, Obi-Wan was struck speechless. How could anyone apparently so intelligent perceive so little? "You forget your place. You forget the respect due to me as your Master, and you have _no idea_ what I'm feeling."

 _The truth is, neither do I,_ he thought with sudden weariness. His calm was a traveller, walking carefully over a thin glass floor, while beneath him, in the pit, something elemental stirred. He didn't need Anakin taking a sledgehammer to the precarious safety he had left.

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, smoothing it back behind his ears, Obi-Wan sighed. "We need to meditate on..."

A sound in the fourth quadrant of the ship interrupted him - the note of metal on metal, transmitted through the hull. "What was that?" Obi-Wan demanded, meditation instantly forgotten, "Someone trying to get in?"

"Sensors detect nothing outside." Anakin said, all business again, the light of the hunt in his face, "But it must be Dooku, mustn't it?"

Piston sound - the secondary hatch opening. Their enemy was coming in through the hold, where the speeders were stored. Not an ideal situation, given how easily he had defeated them before. But if they could only keep him in the ship they could at least take off, and then evacuate the air. "Come on!"

Fastest route was through the pod. Obi-Wan slammed the handpad for the door and slipped through when it was half open, seeing its barrenness with half his mind - the unplugged wires; the IV drip spreading in a pool over the silver floor; the missing clothes; the empty bed.

The empty bed.

Coming through on his heel, Anakin ran into his back, as his world turned upside down with a nauseating thoroughness that hadn't happened to him since...since the last time Qui-Gon Jinn had been in his life.

"Dooku's been and gone?"

"No!" Obi-Wan shook himself, tore, at a speed he hadn't imagined himself capable of, down towards the hatch. Halfway there, he heard the motor start up. By the time they had reached the open ramp all he could see was the bent back of a single swoop rider, disappearing into the trees.

"The little..." he said, filled with a very unJedi-like desire to laugh hysterically, "He was faking it."

"What?" Anakin's hands stopped his as he reached for the steering yoke of the second machine.

"Qui-Gon - he faked the debility so we'd lower our guard and let him escape. Seems to have worked, doesn't it?"

"Chuuba!" Anakin swore appreciatively, "Let me, Master. You know you hate flying."

"Can you catch him?"

Anakin grinned ferociously, "I can catch anyone." He was out of the door on full throttle before Obi-Wan had time to think, so that Obi-Wan's final warnings had to be bellowed into slipwash and exhaust. "Anakin! To him you are the enemy..."

Useless to shout, Anakin had gone forward into his own silence. Obi-Wan finished his sentence only to reassure himself that he still had control over this disaster of a mission. "And Dooku may be out there waiting for you, Padawan."

* * *

_I breathe out pain,_ Qui-Gon told himself, movement of his diaphragm and stomach picked out in quicklime. _I breathe in calm,_ It felt like molten glass - agony solidifying into torment. _I breathe out pain._ Oh Gods, it hurt!

Whether it was the scald of his partly healed burn or just speed filling his eyes with tears, Qui-Gon did not know. Wind lashed his braid against his cheek, flattened his stolen clothes against the wound - _I breathe out...aahh!_ \- and he wanted to stop this, give up, lie down, but he would not.

What was that? The whine of distant pursuit and Force flame of a hunter behind him. Sheer survival pushed him beyond the body's limits as he poured full power to the thrusters and leapt forward. Trees became enemies in ambush, the smallest rock a landmine, the slash of creepers as deadly as a sword at three hundred miles per hour.

Slightest lapse of concentration now would mean death, and even with pain as a white noise on the edge of perception, he loved the thrill of it.

Banking left, passing almost horizontal between branches, the Living Force consumed him in an eternal present - this action, this moment, this risk.

There had been questions - who were these assassins who handled the Force like Jedi? Why had they healed him, yet been merciless to his Master? These questions too he released into the Force, leaving himself empty and clean, poised with exquisite attention to learn only what he must do _Now_.

_You must turn back._

_No!_

The insight was as unmistakable as a voice speaking. But was it really the will of the Force, or was it some fancy of his abused body, which just wanted to rest? It was hard to trust his instincts, when most of the Order told him they were perverse...

Go back to the people who shot his Master? Go back to be used as bait in a trap for the only man who _did_ believe in him?

A line of fern-like trees stood against the sky. The land had been climbing, but now he reached the frozen wave-top of the hill. Bursting into sunshine, the swoop dropped dizzingly, wrenchingly, into a deep valley. He allowed it to plummet, turning at the last moment, kicking in the drives only when his feet touched the water.

The jerk and burn of recoil almost made him black out. _Aaagggh! Oh gods!...Oh! Gods!_ He should not have tried that while injured.

Along the skyline, Qui-Gon's pursuer broke from cover, showing him as if in the mirror, a Jedi Padawan, darkly clothed, bright haired, with a look of exaltation on his face.

 _Jedi? Or Sith?_ Master Dooku had studied the Sith, and did not think they were quite as extinct as the Order believed. And the Sith would make supreme assassins.

_Go back and find out._

Whatever he was, the stranger was phenomenally skilled. Already he had closed the gap between them, taking short-cuts Qui-Gon would not have had the reflexes to survive. _I'm not going to be able to outrun him._

With the realisation came a wave of guilty relief; he was going to be able to obey his insight without actually having to make the decision to do so. But first...

Qui-Gon fumbled one handedly for his communicator. He would go back, but he would not be bait. "Master?"

Response was instant and clear, as if Master Dooku was only a mile or so away. Likely he was on board ship, in orbit almost directly above. "Qui-Gon. Where are you?"

The subtle darkness of Yan Dooku's voice was always a caress, but concern gave it even more depth.

"I'm...ahh...about to be recaptured."

"You're injured!"

"It's...not bad." Talking made him shed too much speed, and the Sith Padawan - or whatever he was - was hanging on his tail, lightsabre drawn. Dipping, Qui-Gon cut across the surface of the stream, raising a wall of water that could - if the Force was with him - short out the pursuer's engine.

But no. The young man just powered through it, and laughed.

"Master, it's you they want. I need to find out who they are. You...have to stay safe."

"No, Padawan. I'm coming for you." The smooth tones held their own tremble, their own tale of pain and partial recovery. Less severe, perhaps, but certainly more carefully covered.

"Please, Master," Qui-Gon slewed the swoop again, to avoid a lightsabre cut to the back ailerons, "I have...one of my hunches about this."

"You're sure?"

Sure? It was a little late not to be sure. He spotted a slope up out of the river, a defensible clearing. "Please."

"I trust your instincts, Qui-Gon. But I will need to hear from you again tomorrow, or I _will_ come, and I will be _thorough_ with your captors. Is that clear?"

The last time Qui-Gon had seen 'thorough' he had found it almost frightening - an insight into a part of his Master's character he did not wish to see again. "I understand, Master. Force be with you."

"And with you, young one."

Slapping the communicator back onto his belt he drew his sabre, cut the swoop's power to zero and vaulted off its back. Landing sent spikes of jagged steel through newly mended bones as sheer willpower allowed him to draw up into first guard. He wasn't fit to fight, but the enemy didn't need to know that.

Cautiously, he watched as the hunter dismounted and came towards him. A pleasant face - younger than his by a couple of years. If this boy had been a true Padawan, at the Temple, Qui-Gon would have told him that his stance was too short and his expression too open, betraying an uncertainty which seemed out of place in a Sith.

But if the youth was a fellow Padawan, this would not be happening at all.

Master Dooku trusted his hunches. One day - if he survived this - he hoped he could learn to trust them himself. Until then, there was always a certain queasy excitement in not knowing what was going to happen next.

* * *

Anakin reinforced his guard, watching Qui-Gon narrowly. Instinct told him to charge in - however much he had been faking his lack of recovery, the other youth was injured, and slow.

_This is Qui-Gon Jinn we're talking about. A friend._

Anakin remembered Jinn as a huge man, but this Padawan was barely taller than he was, and slender as a sapling. Anakin's body, charged with adrenaline, didn't recognise the boy as the man to whom he owed his future. It still wanted to attack.

Deep in a part of him barely touched by Jedi discipline the voice of a sullen child was whispering 'I mourned for him, and it was just a trick. He hurt me, he's bad.'

Anakin's phantom arm ached where his golden fingers curled around the hilt of his sabre, reminding him that this man's Master had maimed him. On his wedding night Padme had flinched when he tried to touch her with his mechanical hand. Dooku had to pay for spoiling something so perfect, and Dooku would grieve if he lost his apprentice.

_How do I know that? Obi-Wan wouldn't give a damn if I died._

A second dragged by. Qui-Gon's eyes were calm, empty, his stance an unknowing insult, Dooku's influence plain in its effortless balance.

Sunshine grew heavy on Anakin's head, and the shade beneath the trees stirred with immanence, as if watching. All the hurts drew together - Dooku, Padme, Obi-Wan, the Council looking at him as if he was a freak. _Oh no._

The Force was moving. Anakin could feel it like a sandstorm rushing towards him. _Oh no._ He had felt this on Tatooine, and welcomed it. It would hit him, explode through his bones, scatter him, and he would wake up later and wonder what he had done. _No, I didn't mean it! I don't want to kill him. How do I make it stop?_

Obi-Wan might have answered that question, but he had never quite dared tell Obi-Wan that the thing he was afraid of most in the universe was the Force itself.

In a gesture of goodwill, not compromising his defence, Qui-Gon lowered his sabre slightly. Pain could not hide the edge of astonishment in his voice. "I want to come back with you. I don't want to fight."

The stormfront of Force approached. Anakin could feel it behind him, raising the hair on the back of his neck, crushing the heart in his chest. Surrender would be quick and easy - it would pass and he would be himself again.

_Just as it passed in the Tusken camp._

How had this happened? Growing up, Qui-Gon had been his hero. Whenever Obi-Wan failed him - said no too often, held him back, exercised some pointless restriction - Anakin had said to himself 'Qui-Gon would have let me.' Was this storm of destruction conjured up by a subconscious that wanted to make sure the real thing couldn't disappoint?

 _I don't care! I'm not giving in this time._ Anakin's head was splitting. Breathing was impossible - the Force was filling him too full. A long time ago, when Obi-Wan had chided him for lack of meditation, he had told his Master 'It's like plugging into a supernova. Something in my head just goes blooie' But Obi-Wan had not understood. He _never_ understood. "I..."

"Are you alright?" Stupidly enough, his enemy seemed concerned for him. He remembered that. He remembered that Qui-Gon had been the only one who treated him like a child and not a time-bomb, the only one who never thought he was a threat.

_Ironic, huh?_

With a phenomenal effort Anakin gasped in air, moved his thumb, barely conscious that the two lightsabre blades shut down together.

"I don't want to fight you either," he grated, "Only I..." He had killed his first man like this - at the age of 13, on Zonama Sekot - the Force had been a tightening noose around his brain and, when the knot had straightened out, the man who threatened him was dead. Another secret he hadn't told his Master. "Chuuba!"

The first wave of power slammed into him. Blizzard-strong, the wind tore at him - his cloak ballooning, the ends of his stola slapping, sleeves being filled and plucked. Dead wood on the clearing floor took off, spinning tornado-like. Small lightnings hissed and snapped over his flesh.

He fell to his knees, clutching his hair. The inside of his skull was white and scoured - he could almost feel the flesh slough off his face. His blood seethed, and every cell in his body was like an erupting volcano. _NO! I will not let you!_

Heedless of the electricity, hands grabbed his forearms, steadying him. How could anyone bear to touch him? Wasn't he as scalding as a sun?

"Let it go!" Qui-Gon shouted over the roar of Force, his young face full of urgency, "Let it go. I'll channel it."

Anakin looked up, the Force in him surging - a live thing, twisting and biting, frantic to be free. "Do you know how?"

"No!" Qui-Gon's braid lashed him in the eye as if to emphasise how inexperienced he was, but there was still no fear in his expression, only a reckless confidence, "But I trust the Force. I'll make something up."

"It'll kill you."

Unexpectedly, Qui-Gon's face lit with exultant certainty, and even in the midst of terror Anakin felt a stab of recognition, understanding - _Like me in a speeder chase._ "What a way to go!"

The words created an island of calm around them, an interval in which action could take place, even if it was only for Anakin to ease open the clenched fists which held the monster back. Sobbing, the pain shredding his thoughts, he let go.

It was as if he'd stuck his hand in a power coupling. His heart stopped and something huge moved through him. He didn't know if he felt agony or ecstasy - the feeling was too inhuman, too crystalline. The blizzard heightened. Strange trees screamed as they exploded. Earth tore and fountained into the sky. Something metallic, glittering, went spinning like the knives of a blender around the still centre where Anakin and Qui-Gon knelt, clinging together like frightened children in the storm.

At last, it eased. With a lurch of shock Anakin's heart came back on line - fast, panicky, and he took in a breath that didn't hurt.

Qui-Gon let go of him, swiftly, as if embarrassed, and wiped blood from his nose with a shaking hand. Blood also coursed down the angle of his jaw - perhaps from a burst eardrum. "What just happened?"

But Anakin was watching the rain of debris: clots of mud, splintered wood, and those metal pieces which looked exactly like what you would get if you dismembered two valuable swoops. "Oh, chuuba!" he said miserably, "Obi-Wan's going to kill me."

* * *

"Underestimated young Jinn you did." The hologram's blue-ruled image of Master Yoda had raised his ears slightly at the news that Qui-Gon was not quite as dead as reported. Obi-Wan's heart was eased by the old Councillor's relief. _It was hard enough for him to condemn Dooku, but to lose his grand-Padawan also?_

"Yes, Master. I forgot how...devious...he can be."

Councillor Starthief nodded his age-spotted head approvingly. "Devious. Exactly. And deceit is a mark of the Dark side. This makes me wonder if perhaps Dooku's taint has already been passed on. Should we be looking at eliminating Jinn also?"

Before his mind had fully processed the sentence, Obi-Wan found himself stepping back into Defensive Stance - body expressing what his face was not permitted to show. _I can't watch him die again. I can't._

Yoda's eyes narrowed and his large mouth pursed with disapproval. "Like water Qui-Gon is, hard to shape or grasp. But deceitful he is not."

Starthief's nostrils widened as if he smelled something rank. His bow of acceptance was minimal. "Nevertheless we are still left with the question of what to do with him."

Against his side, Obi-Wan's comlink vibrated urgently. Taking Anakin's report he was uncomfortably aware of twelve dispassionate gazes, weighing his reaction. "Anakin?"

"I have him, Master."

"Make all speed back then."

"Ah," _Oh Force!_ Obi-Wan knew that tone of voice. _Now what?_

"There's been a bit of an accident. We, um, don't have the swoops any more. Could you come and pick us up?"

Closing his eyes, Obi-Wan performed a brief round of the 'raindrop' meditation, letting frustration and anger wash away. "What did you do?"

"It's complicated."

Falling rain, gentle as springtime, cool on his skin, making him clean. "Later then. Are you secure to wait? I will come when I can."

"We're fine." Anakin's voice was soft, comfortable. The fact that he had twice spoken of himself and his prisoner as a unit was not lost on Obi-Wan. He hoped Qui-Gon was not duping Anakin into overconfidence again. It would not be difficult.

"Be alert, Padawan. Remember the mission."

"Yes, Master." Anakin's rote response did not sound chastened, and Obi-Wan sighed with frustration as he turned again to face the strange Council.

"Masters. I need to know how to proceed."

It was morning on Coruscant. Behind Master Dikean's pale lekku the last shreds of a red sunrise showed mauve on the hologram's low resolution bands. Yoda's small claws were tinted lilac as they flexed on his stick. "Isolated from this problem Jinn can no longer be," he said firmly, "Recruit him you must."

Obi-Wan saw the implications at once. He was not the only one. "Ask a Padawan to act against his Master?" Starthief growled, "It's totally against the Code."

"A test of ultimate loyalties it is. A test of detachment. Of independence."

"You're talking about knighthood." Dikean's head-tails writhed on his shoulders with agitation, "But Jinn is twenty two. It's ridiculously early."

"No other option I see."

This too plucked a pang of grief from Obi-Wan's memory - the thought of a beloved voice saying 'There's little more I can teach him.' His first indication that the dreaded 'Trials' were sometimes a mere matter of convenience. He might have taken a base pleasure in the poetic justice, if he had not remembered how painful it was to lose the mainstay of one's life.

The parallel was too exact for comfort. Qui-Gon's knighthood too would be bought at the cost of his Master's death. He hated to do that to anyone. "I...it's a hard trial."

"Hard all trials are, or worthless they would be. You think he cannot pass?"

Obi-Wan thought of Xanatos and the driven energy with which Qui-Gon had hunted down his Dark Padawan, relentless in duty. He remembered too the months afterwards, full of his Master's silent, bitter mourning. "He will pass. But the cost will be great."

Obi-Wan had hardly seen Padawan Jinn, conscious, but what he remembered was the look of innocence - an innocence this test would kill. _Isn't that the point of the Trials though? We enter them children, we come out adult._

Adult. How shorn and naked his head had felt without the braid, that first day! Memory pulled at him like the vacuum of space - the pyre, the brutal shock as Obi-Wan watched his Master's body wither in flames. He was afraid to breathe, in case he smelled again meat and charred hair. Heart speeding, mouth dry, he thought _The image has no power over me!_ But Oh! it still did.

Immobile, dry eyed, hollow as blown glass, aching to find something, _anything_ , that would make this moment go away. Oh yes, Obi-Wan remembered passing his trials. Knighthood had tasted of ash ever since. Not worth the price.

"Settled it is then." Yoda was saying, the age-washed shingle of his voice brisk. "Tell Jinn all you must. If a true Jedi he is, put aside his own feelings he will and help you destroy the traitor. Decide his own future, he may."

Bowing stiffly, Obi-Wan flicked off the hologram before sinking into the pilot's seat. He felt fine-spun, delicate, as he had not felt since the weeks after the battle of Naboo. _I must conquer this._ The Council of his own time had trusted his emotional detachment from the mission. He had been certain his control was adequate. Now he was not so sure.

Opening the landing ramp, Obi-Wan went out to kneel in the open air and grass. Tiny green flowers gave out a scent like soap. A slight breeze made the treetops whisper above him and invaded the recycled air of the cabin with the smell of life.

_My past makes me who I am. It cannot be altered, only accepted._

It helped to take time to breathe, to practice peace. It helped to remember that this was Padawan Jinn's trial, not his own. Obi-Wan's worry and aching sympathy could do no good to anyone - it was useless. He should discard it.

'"Keep your concentration on the here and now, where it belongs,"' he told himself, surprised that the usual warmth of that memory had become another hurt.

_You're afraid for him._

He closed his eyes, counted breaths, basic as an initiate, and recited the Code. No fear, no anger, no love.

Without love, this pain would not exist. He would not care about the disillusionment of a youth who had looked at him and seen only an enemy.

 _So I will not care,_ he decided, reassured by the simplicity of it. Time passed, and the decision sank into the Force around him, creating stillness. One by one he plucked away all the anxieties and the negative feelings, let them fall into the Force as if into a still pool, until at last he was aware, calm, indifferent. A Jedi once more.

Rising, he brushed pollen from his trousers, straightened his stola, tucked the hair back behind his ears. _Besides,_ tapping the ramp control smartly he dived back into the control room. _My Master was a great man. But Dooku is... It may be an act of mercy, allowing Qui-Gon to escape from him._

As he checked Anakin's transmitter and fed the location into the navi-comp, the thoughts took their own path. _What would it be like, to be apprenticed to a man like that?_

If he tried, Obi-Wan could still feel a faint buzz in wrists and ankles from the crawling electric discharge of energy restraints. Dooku had been so polite, so sincere, as he paced around his captive, handing out false sympathy and poisoned accusation. _Playing with my mind, playing on my affections._ Offering the subtle torments of doubt and temptation, but no aid, not even a drink.

 _No wonder Qui-Gon never trusted authority,_ Obi-Wan thought, with a sensation of cold revelation, _When he had such a psychic vampire for a master._

Gravity caught the ship, pulled it gently down into a river valley, and Obi-Wan felt himself sink with it, out of the balance of meditation into a new dread.

Landing struts hit, hissed and settled, and Obi-Wan braced himself to tell a young Padawan that he must help to kill his own Master. It was either the most heartbreaking trial ever devised, or something worse. _What if it's nothing more than institutionalized revenge?_

* * *

"Who are you?" Aftershocks of pure power were scrambling the nerves in Qui-Gon's skin. Too intense for his senses to function separately, he still felt the movement of air as a swirl of colours around him, the sharp pain of his ear a dot of blazing red. "What were you trying to do?"

A long time ago, Qui-Gon had been pushed, bound, into a lake full of dianogas. There were nights when he still dreamed of the icy plunge, bulks of moving muscle brushing past him, half guess and half unseen threat. Gilt edged light from two moons picked out glimpses of huge, serpentine bodies, and he felt the touch of alien minds, chaotic, curious, as they nosed him to see if he was meat. The Force-storm he had just lived through was a little like that. He felt both humbled and privileged to have seen it and survived.

"My name's Anakin," the youth said, pulling his knees in to his chest and resting his cheek on his folded arms, reacting to the astounding experience as if it was his own personal purgatory. "What was I trying to do? Force knows! Maybe just to prove again what a failure I am."

It was plain to Qui-Gon that this, or something like it, had happened to Anakin before, and the memory was acid in him - he could _feel_ it, as if Anakin was the one with the blaster-burn. Pain leaked out around the youth's mental shields, darkening his aura. _But I don't need to sense it, I can *see* it._ The posture said everything. As assassins went, Qui-Gon thought, Anakin seemed far too trusting. Far too vulnerable. _It's as if he knows me - as if we're friends, confidants._

Deep unease stirred in him at the thought, reminding him of the heartfelt desperation with which this youth and his older companion had poured out healing on him. _What am I missing? What have I not remembered, or seen wrong?_ Clearly he had misread his situation at a basic level.

Doubt was an irritant as profound as the itch of drying blood on Qui-Gon's cheek, but it could not prevent some primal part of him from perceiving hurt and reaching out to comfort. "A failure? I've never _seen_ power like that!"

As his senses re-aligned themselves colour washed out of the air. The last charged streamers of the Force uncurled themselves from Qui-Gon's blood and slid away. It felt as if his midichlorians were curling up like exhausted animals and falling asleep one by one. His body was shutting down with them, turning chilled, shaky.

"I have more power than any other Jedi." Something of the same shudder was in Anakin's voice, "I can do all the party tricks without thinking," contempt turned his pleasant face hard, "But that's just the edge of it." He bared his teeth with the anger of something wounded. "None of them understand how *strong* it is. It hurts! It scares me sometimes. I can't control it. I can't get it to listen, and... I almost killed you."

Qui-Gon had been inside the boy's force-signature, united with it, and he knew there was a lie here - he could taste it, sour as wormwood in his mouth. But he could not tell which part of the statement had been false. _And maybe he's lying to himself?_ "'Almost' makes a big difference," he said, "Besides, I thought that was what you'd come for."

"No!" Anakin was still huddled like a trauma victim - painful to watch. "It was a mistake. An accident."

An accident?! Qui-Gon stood up. Nausea and weakness spun in a whirlpool behind his eyes. Stumbling slightly, his boot knocked against a severed swoop-fin, the absurdly fragile alloy crumpled with impact.

Leather-winged avians had begun to settle around the wreckage of the clearing, but the scrunch of metal sent them bursting back into the sky. The frigid afternoon was filled with cries of warning. "You said you were a Jedi," he repeated stupidly, feeling the humiliation sink in.

It was all a mistake. An accident. And Qui-Gon's clever escape, his care to keep his Master isolated from danger, were nothing more than foolishness. He should have observed more carefully, been more awake for what the Force wanted of him, been...more like Master Dooku and less like himself.

"Yes." Anakin said. He had not yet raised his head. His eyes were closed and his voice sounded dreamlike, floating. "Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Padawan Anakin Skywalker."

The boy was in danger of going into shock, Qui-Gon realised. He reassessed his own condition - confused, despondent, sick, cold. _We both are. The Force storm drained us both._ The exact nature of this near-lethal mistake would have to be sorted out later. It was now his responsibility as senior Padawan to take charge.

"Anakin!" he shouted, "Anakin!" A curious flinch went through young Skywalker's whole body at that tone. The blond head raised reluctantly. "Get up and collect firewood. Put it over there. Do you understand?"

In extremis it could be comforting to lay aside responsibility and simply follow orders. There were occasions when the rank structure of the Order was like coming home. From the look of reassurance on Anakin's face as he struggled to his feet, this was one of them. It was helpful for Qui-Gon, too. He could concentrate on hammering the tail fin into a crude bowl and fetching water rather than berating himself for the assumption that just because this boy and his master had tried to kill him that necessarily meant they were his enemies. _Sloppy thinking, Padawan._

There was no shortage of kindling, and,though green, it lit eagerly beneath the touch of a sabre. He arranged three rocks to form a tripod and set the water to boil.

Anakin pulled two of the larger logs over as seats and then relapsed into shivering misery.

 _I don't think he was lying about fearing the power, or not wanting it,_ Qui-Gon thought, shredding a food capsule into the water. _So it must be his ability to control it he deludes himself about._ He wondered how much of this Anakin's Master knew. How much of it Yoda knew. How could it be that he had never even heard about Anakin before? How could such talent and such distress be hidden?

Reaching over, Qui-Gon unclipped the other youth's com-unit and pushed it into Anakin's hand. It worried him too that Anakin was so compliant with him, offering a complete stranger a lifetime's trust. Something was still out of kilter. Something was very wrong. And there was one person who held the answers. "You might want to com your Master."

The words brought a brittle life back to Anakin's sabre-blue eyes. In the residue of their closeness Qui-Gon could easily sense the rush of guilt, fear, resentment and yearning to please. It twisted his heart, _Gods, I remember that._ For a brief period in his youth he had been Yoda's apprentice, and he could taste even now the soul-destroying hopelessness of having a Master you could neither please nor understand. Not everyone was as lucky as he was - being handed off to a kindred spirit like Master Dooku.

The one-sided conversation over, Anakin tucked his comlink away and edged closer to the fire. There was an intensity about him very different from the usual Jedi serenity, Qui-Gon thought. His power and the core of pain he carried must not have earned him many friends at the Temple.

"You _can_ control the Force," Qui-Gon said, thoughtfully, "Not many people can keep up with me on a swoop, but you caught me effortlessly. The Force was with you."

"Racing." Anakin's smile was surprising in its zeal and warmth. "I love to race. I love the thrill, the way it pushes me. It makes me go somewhere clean, pure..." The smile died away into a look of defensive arrogance, "But I know 'a Jedi seeks not these things'. I've been up before the Council so many times for illegal racing - they say it brings the Order into disrepute. But they can't understand, - you can't understand - how much I need it."

Qui-Gon found a section of mudguard and began beating it into a cup. "You feel like you're going mad with the oppressiveness of it. All the rules! Especially the ones they don't tell you about until after you've broken them..." He looked up in time to catch Anakin's open mouthed awe at having someone speak in a language he understood, and nodded. "I feel it too. But then I shut myself in a training room with ten remotes and burn it off." He laughed at the thought of it - the danger, the exhilaration and the final peace. "That's _my_ racing. Yoda was always telling me how reckless and stupid it was." He saw no reason to prevent the smile, "But Master Dooku just calls it 'kinetic meditation' and lets me get on with it."

He filled the cup with soup and passed it to Anakin's metal hand, noticing that even the prosthetic trembled slightly. "Maybe you just need to change your danger?"

"Or my Master." Anakin's face was sullen again, and the gleam of sunny good nature clouded as he bent his head over the steaming broth. Many secret hurts and hopes drew together to freight his next question with deep emotion, and Qui-Gon drew a breath, conscious that a turning point approached. "You love him don't you?"

"What?"

"Dooku. You care for him." Few people could have made the name sound more like a curse. Qui-Gon frowned, unsettled. His Master had many detractors in the Temple, but he had never imagined any of them felt such hatred.

"It's a complicated question," he said, not knowing whether he was failing or succeeding in Anakin's eyes, "He's..."

The standard Padawan response would be '...like a father to me'. But Qui-Gon had no idea what a father was supposed to be. When he thought of Yan Dooku - smooth, subtle, and scathingly intelligent, with the bearing of a prince and the mystique of a warrior-mage - it was with a certain astonishment that the man could want to associate with him at all. Master Dooku delighted in quality - he liked to be the best, and to have the best of everything. So it was something of a mystery to Qui-Gon why he had chosen an apprentice so cloddish, and why he did more than simply tolerate Qui-Gon's presence at his shoulder, but actually seemed to enjoy it.

"He's a good man. A great Jedi. I'm very lucky to be his student." That sounded so insincere. He tried again. "Can you understand what it's like, growing up among people who might be speaking another language - they make so little sense to you? And then...years after you've accepted that you're just some freak of nature, you find another person who sees things as you do?" He didn't say 'And they rescue you.' It sounded too pathetic. But it was true. Master Dooku had found him starving and offered him bread. That debt could never be repaid. "So I suppose yes. I must love him. Why?"

Light flashed as Anakin flexed the fingers of his metallic hand one by one, wincing as if the jointure of droid and flesh ached.

"I think you need to speak to Master Obi-Wan," Anakin said tightly, "And soon."

* * *

"We're from the future. We're here with the Council's blessing, to execute the traitor, Yan Dooku."

"It's not true." Qui-Gon looked down into the set, stubborn face of Master Kenobi for reassurance - some hint that what he'd just said was nothing more than one of the mind games of the Council. Kenobi's sea coloured eyes were calm, but in their depth was a hint of pity, terrifying in its implications.

He turned away. Looking at Kenobi's face gave him faint vertigo - a persistent sense of deja-vu - as if, at any moment, he might be able to remember what was so important about the man. "Search your feelings, Qui-Gon, you know I'm not lying." Kenobi said, with what seemed to be gentleness.

"I know that you're sincere in what you say." Qui-Gon countered with exactness, "But I must believe that you are mistaken."

Night was falling in layers of silver blue over the clearing. Kenobi's ship had landed square across the crater and bulked there, a silent presence, dim in the twilight. The fire's glow had grown more golden as darkness filtered through the trees. Now it spoke of tribal safety and warmth. He turned his back on machine and blaze alike and faced the trees, wanting nothing more than to walk away from them both - Anakin with his secrets and Kenobi with his terrible purity. "My Master would never be a traitor. My master would not..." He shook his head, panic was blocking his throat like a seed unfurling, and the words wouldn't come. "You have been deceived."

He felt rather than saw as the older man took two quick steps - all his movements were quick, precise - and reached out a comforting hand. It didn't quite touch Qui-Gon's arm, and for that he was grateful. He didn't need Kenobi's sympathy. He needed him to take back what he had just said. Where was the Force when he needed it? Why was nothing telling him that this was false?

"I have proof."

Qui-Gon turned back and saw them both, stricken. Kenobi with a rigidness about him that spoke of intense control, Anakin all darkness, his face sullen. "Show me," he said, angry because he could feel their anguish, and it made him feel guilty on top of the fear.

_Show me your evidence and I'll knock it to pieces!_

He had expected documents, an electronic trail through the archives, some towering structure of hints and clues that could be destroyed by simple clear thinking. Not holo-footage.

"After the complex was cleared," Kenobi said, crisply, "We discovered security cams everywhere. Some of the recordings were intact."

Anakin brought the holoprojector out of the ship and set it up, busy over the wires and circuits as if they were his shield against the world. Placing the crystal in its socket he backed away to the fireside, rubbing his arm, while the ghosts of elaborate metal lights ringed the recording of a room, defining pillars, a trackway, the form of a captive Jedi in energy restraints, his face a mask of calm defiance.

The flesh and blood version of Kenobi came to stand by Qui-Gon's shoulder, watching himself in small, distracted glances. But Qui-Gon could spare him no attention - his Master had come in. Raw - as if the accusation of treachery had scraped a layer off his heart - it was painful even to see how Master Dooku had aged. The obsidian blade had faded into silver, scratched and matt with wear. Softer edged, perhaps, but no less elegant, no less deadly.

He heard the black velvet voice say "'I wish Qui-Gon were here.'" and something sharp turned inside him. _Fifty years into the future and he still thinks of me fondly._

"Qui-Gon Jinn would _never_ join you!" The captive Obi-Wan was vehement, as if Dooku had trespassed on something sacred.

"You forget that he was once my apprentice as you were once his."'

Sweeping out a hand to stop the recording, Qui-Gon backed away from his companion and studied Kenobi with new eyes. This stocky, enigmatic assassin had once been a small boy who tagged along behind _him_ , awaiting his wisdom? _Oh, gods!_ Too many emotions were packaged in that for him to fully understand what he felt, but - ridiculous though it was - one of them was a sudden upswelling of protectiveness. It explained what he felt, looking at Obi-Wan's intense face - not deja vu, but the echo across three decades of a Master/Padawan bond.

"What happened to me?" he asked, puzzled by the reverent tone in which both men had spoken his name.

"You died." There was a line ruled straight between Kenobi's brows, and the hazel eyes were hot with defensive anger. "Ten years before this. Anakin was your last gift to me."

"You were gonna teach me," Anakin broke in, piebald between the fire's light and the indigo of recorded shadows, "But then you got killed."

"Dooku left the Order only a few weeks afterwards. The Council understood it as a protest, because you had been sent to fight a Sith alone." Kenobi didn't fidget, he seemed to have no nervous gestures at all. Poised and solemn as a young king, he told Qui-Gon that a lifetime in the future Yan Dooku had cared enough to sacrifice his career for him, and he seemed not to be aware of how much that meant.

"Soon after that he began building the Separatist movement. And only a month ago - our time - we found out that he'd been creating a massive army. When we tried to stop him, he killed half of the Council, almost a hundred other Jedi, and escaped, leaving the Republic poised on the brink of civil war." Kenobi's back could not have been straighter if his spine was made of durasteel, and the bunched muscles of his jaw showed even under the beard. "You must understand, Qui-Gon, that if we kill him now we can stop this before it starts."

It was obscene. Inconceivable. "What!" Now outrage and, yes, betrayal joined the hatching draigon of panic in his chest. "I thought you meant he was a traitor _now!_ But what you're saying is you're going to kill him for something he hasn't even done yet?" _I taught a man who could believe this was right?_ "You've come back in time to kill an innocent man! What kind of Jedi are you?"

"The Council both in my time and in yours have agreed that this is necessary." Now the mouth thinned too, so that Kenobi was imprisoned in his own straight lines. "To preserve Galactic peace and save millions of lives." He held up a commanding hand, forestalling Qui-Gon's response. "See the evidence before you decide, Padawan."

Despair tightened around Qui-Gon's throat. Silently - what words were there adequate for this? - he turned back to the holo. Watched Master Dooku toy with Kenobi as gently as a sandpanther with its prey. That feline grace of his had always covered a subtle cruelty - but it was hateful to see how refined it had become.

He saw executions, melodramatic and bloody, his beloved teacher presiding with a small smile, like a holovid villain, and he recognized each small darkness in his Master's character, now evolved into suave evil.

Jedi crumpled under droid fire. Machines walked over brown-cloaked bodies. A duel, Kenobi and Anakin ragged together, fighting as if they didn't trust each other.

When Master Dooku hacked off Anakin's arm it felt like a blade through his own heart. He staggered, lowered himself to the ground by the fire, too heavy with grief to stand upright any more.

"I believe it's your right to know this too." The final holo was a record of a conversation between Kenobi and the Council. It must have been taken this afternoon, as he and Anakin talked. He had to ask for it to be replayed twice before he would believe it.

'"Tell Jinn all you must. If a true Jedi he is, put aside his own feelings he will and help you destroy the traitor. Decide his own future, he may.

 _Oh Gods!_ He shook his head numbly, as if he could shake the thought off. How could they _do_ this? "No!"

Concern was now blatant in Kenobi's eyes. "I wish I could ask for your forgiveness..."

"No."

He wrapped an arm around himself, hugging, covering his face with the other hand so they wouldn't see how close he was to tears. _I can't! I can't. Oh, Master!_ "No. I won't do it."

"But this is your Trial, Qui-Gon, and you must."

* * *

An ochre striped moon hung above the clearing, its rings pencil strokes of citrine and amber against a sweep of hot blue stars. Obi-Wan paused in the entrance hatch, feeling the device he held warm slowly in his fingers, watching his shadow stretching over their campsite, until it just touched Qui-Gon's relaxed hands.

 _Some things haven't changed,_ he thought, nostalgically, _When I don't know what to do, I ask the Council. When he doesn't know, he meditates._ In classic seiza pose, kneeling, the Padawan's back was very straight, palms open on his thighs. Firelight gilded him, and the forest's shadow fell about his shoulders like long, silvered hair.

 _I never let myself miss him,_ Obi-Wan thought, watching the young man's solidity, and the blank peace of his expression, _It seemed too self-indulgent._ But the ache must have been there below the threshold of awareness, because he felt oddly comforted by the sight.

Letting go of sentiment he braced himself once more for reality. Checking his belt pouches his fingertips brushed over spun-carbon restraints, and the small vial of Force-suppressant serum, already loaded in its applicator. He didn't want to have to use them on Qui-Gon, but, if it proved necessary, he would. _He won't make me. He will make the right choice._

"Anakin," he called, "Bring the projector back on board. We should be inside."

Fern-like fronds rustled as a night breeze stirred the trees and made the fire dance. In the blackness of the forest something sang - a liquid rill of notes pure as chimes. "Can't we camp out here?" Anakin asked, reminding Obi-Wan for one happy second of the eager boy he had had such high hopes for, "I like it. It reminds me of Naboo."

"No, my young Padawan. Dooku is still out there. If he attacks during the night..."

"He won't." Obi-Wan found himself fixed by an azure gaze, level, centred, very calm. He swallowed, remembering that look, knowing bone deep that Qui-Gon was now committed to whatever path he had chosen. _Are we to be enemies, Master?_

"I asked him to stay away." Qui-Gon continued, with only the faintest compression of the mouth to show that he felt the irony, "Until I'd found out about you. What you wanted. I was trying to make sure he would be safe."

That explained much. The lack of present threat had been puzzling Obi-Wan. Breathing out his anxiety he strode down the ramp and went to stand over the kneeling man. "What is your response to this Trial, Padawan Jinn?"

Qui-Gon looked up, eyes opaque as turquoise. "I cannot allow the future you have shown me to come into being, Master Kenobi. I will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure it doesn't happen."

Focussing, Obi-Wan sensed no lie - distaste, yes, reluctance, a feeling that he was betraying a sacred trust, but no lie. _I knew it. He hunted down Xanatos, his own son. I knew he would be as faithful a Jedi in this._ Unexpectedly, relief hit Obi-Wan like a plague, leaving him trembling. His fists tightened, driving the concealed stunner's ridges sharply into his palm. _Thank the Force, I don't have to use it._ Tucking it back into his tunic he turned away for a moment to regain his composure.

"So we can stay outside?" Anakin said with brittle gaiety, pulling at his bottom lip, pinching it 'til it bruised.

"I'd like that too," Qui-Gon said, "I find the trees soothing. It will help me... come to terms with what I'm doing." He seemed settled, emotions shut away like a miser's hoard in a heavy safe, and Obi-Wan couldn't tell if anguish remained, or if the decision had brought him peace.

"You're sure Dooku will stay away?"

The lifted gaze was terrible in its faith and clarity. "He promised. He doesn't break his word."

Again, Obi-Wan had to turn away. "Very well then."

* * *

The moon crept across the sky - shadows shifted and lengthened. Leaping flame became embers. Anakin moved close to Qui-Gon and cleared his throat once or twice as if he meant to speak, each time looking at Obi-Wan and falling silent. Finally he gritted his fine white teeth and muttered, "You don't have to, you know."

Qui-Gon smiled and squeezed his arm. "Trust me?"

And Obi-Wan, seeing how well they connected with each other, felt a strange desolation, a mourning for what might have been.

Shrugging off his borrowed cloak, Qui-Gon looked at his streaked, rust brown hands, pulled his braid away from his throat, individual hairs gummed to his skin with dried blood. Rising, he headed for the ship.

"What are you doing?" Obi-Wan asked, more sharply than he had intended. He watched with a stern look that faltered into incredulity as Qui-Gon stopped in front of him and, all innocence, folded himself into the archaic posture of penitence - on his knees, hands laced behind the nape of his neck, looking down.

"I thought I'd take a shower, Oh Master. If that would be acceptable to you. I realize I should have consulted you first. Please forgive me for my impudence."

On the other side of the fire, despite everything, Anakin snorted into his sleeve. _Gods bless us,_ thought Obi-Wan with a stab of unexpected sympathy for his enemy, _I'm glad he's not *my* Padawan._ "Do it then," he said, trying not to be amused, "And less of the theatrics next time."

But he caught Anakin's gaze and smiled, buoyant with the release of tension. Finally the Force was favouring them. Qui-Gon had made the right decision and it had obviously not been that hard for him. _With the three of us working together, the mission becomes simple._

Rolling over, he pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders and relaxed into the mattress of bracken. Sap smelled like ambergris beneath his cheek. The breeze lessened, and the fire's warmth spread comfortably over him. Freed from grief and guilt he let go and drifted into sleep.

* * *

_Snap!_ A twig broke. Animals sang out warning. Obi-Wan was on his feet instantly, adrenaline coursing through him, sabre alight in his hand. In the pitch black of the now moonless night many torches patterned the ground around him with spots of gold that swept into his eyes as he moved.

_Blast! I forgot the natives._

How could he have forgotten that the Priest-King's emissary had seen the attack on Dooku? Why had he not realized that it would be a matter of honour for the people of this planet to capture the assassins? _My focus has been too narrow._

"Anakin, Qui-Gon! Into the ship!"

Hearing the hum of two sabres, Anakin's loping run, he darted into the ship, rehearsing the needed actions in his head - power up the drives, get everyone on board, close up, take off, find another battleground, where he would not endanger innocent citizens. "Hurry, Padawans!"

Flicked switches filled the cabin with strobing crimson light. _What!_ He breathed out, pressed the reset, started the ignition sequence again, and again the board lit up uniformly red. No drives, no comms, no life-support, nothing.

Anakin was at the door. Unspeaking, he pulled off the insulating panel beneath the controls to look at the drive computers, and Obi-Wan's heart stopped in a reflex of horror. There, melting the delicate circuitry into slag, was the long, thorough cut of a lightsabre blade.

 _Oh, Force!_ He thought of Qui-Gon, strolling onboard, unsupervised, earlier in the evening, neither Obi-Wan nor Anakin following because they both trusted him. _Oh, Force, Qui-Gon, what have you done?_ This must be some mistake. Qui-Gon would not have joked with him and then gone on to trap and betray him. He would not.

"Plan B then, Padawan. We evade the soldiers and find cover in the forest."

Force-assisted speed got him past the hatchway, though the strange organic lightning of the natives' energy weapons fizzled in the metal all around him. He deflected bolts instinctively, moving for the gap in their encirclement.

There, beneath the trees, was a light like summer sunshine filtering through leaves; Qui-Gon's blade, the tall shape of the Padawan more shadow than colour in its glow. Soldiers closed in behind Obi-Wan, funnelling him towards the encounter. _Don't make me do this!_ There was still some answer to this riddle other than the obvious. There had to be. _My Master would *not*._

Like the sun rising, a second blade - amber gold - kindled beside Qui-Gon, and Dooku stepped out into the torch-spattered chaos of the clearing, smiling.

"NO!"

As if at a signal, the natives lowered their weapons, and silence was loud in Obi-Wan's reeling head. "You're trapped, Master Kenobi." Dooku said gently, "Why don't you surrender?"

It was hard enough to bear his own Master going rogue, without this cruel reminder of Dooku and Mace in the arena. " _Never!_ " he grated from a throat gone tighter than wire, and leapt forward to attack.

Without the searing power of the Dark Side, deprived of fifty years of additional experience, Dooku was less overwhelming. A moment's hope flickered among the bitterness in Obi-Wan's chest - _I can take him!_ \- and died, because half of the time when he turned to make a sweep, Anakin was there, in the way, both of them attempting the same attack or neglecting the same defence. Fury built, and when he saw how Qui-Gon and Dooku fought together, with the same perfect communion and instinctive beauty Obi-Wan had once had with Master Jinn, it felt as if something shattered in him.

_I've destroyed everything - Qui-Gon's future, and Anakin's, and my own. I should never have come. Oh, Force, Master!_

A tendril of light from one of the foray guns grazed the back of Anakin's head. Bumping Obi-Wan's elbow Anakin cried out, staggered, and went down.

"No!" He could bear no more. He must destroy Dooku or die trying. Abandoning defence, Obi-Wan leapt into the air, twisted, trying to come down behind the renegade Master with one pure cut to the neck that would finish this.

The blade slashed out, but Qui-Gon had already turned, and the block hissed angrily between them for a microsecond, until Obi-Wan realized he could no longer see Dooku. Pity was the last thing he noticed in Qui-Gon's eyes before the blow came from behind and sent him into darkness.

* * *

Obi-Wan knew he was alive by the pain. It interwove the dank, sour smell of his dungeon, making swimming lights behind his eyes. Bound - with depressing efficiency - to a chair, his shoulders ached from stiffness, and, when he opened his eyes, sunlight cracked his skull open and poured burning tar into his head.

"It's only concussion. Try to relax."

Qui-Gon's voice was softly pitched, soothing. On many missions that voice had been the signal that the nightmare was over - that Obi-Wan had been rescued. He felt a moment of relief, instinctive as breathing.

And then he remembered. "What have you done!" Struggling against his bonds, he registered briefly the cool, ivory table by which he sat, the wide echo of a large stone room, the intolerable blaze of a window, before his head gave a blinding throb and he had to double over, jaw locking in an attempt to stop from throwing up. "Aah!"

"I'm sorry about this." One of Qui-Gon's hands, large and deft as he remembered, pushed into his hair, gently angled his head - the other pressed an injector against his throat. With a sharp sting and hiss the drug entered his blood, and the pain eased, washing out of him like dye into water. "Is that better?"

Now that he could focus, without agony writing glimmering letters over his vision, Obi-Wan could see that the room was no dungeon after all. Opulent, uncomfortable chairs of gilded wood stood on a stone floor sweating with damp. Anakin was slumped over the corner of the table as if he'd fallen asleep in a class, head pillowed on bound arms, snoring slightly. The light of a slatted window above him striped his fair hair. His eyelids pinched in the glare. _Alive, then,_ Obi-Wan thought, shakily.

A far off wood-fire in a triangular hearth provided only a whisper of heat, its brilliance more a psychological comfort than a warmth, but Obi-Wan had been in enough castles to recognize a disused banqueting room, not a prison. There was some hope then, still. "Qui-Gon, you needn't turn rogue. There's still a chance for you. Please reconsider."

"I'm not your enemy, Master Kenobi." Qui-Gon settled on the foot of a divan, and rubbed his thumb over one of the aurodium symbols on its slender ebony leg. Dust pared away and the multicoloured sheen gleamed petrol like from the metal. "And I haven't failed yet. I just can't play according to your rules."

 _Oh Force!_ Obi-Wan had heard that tone of voice before, always just before Qui-Gon decided it suited him to ignore the Code this time. _Oh, Force, Qui-Gon, not in your Trials!_ "They're not _my_ rules, Padawan Jinn. They're _the_ rules. The Council's rules. It's not up to you to change your trial to something else that suits you better."

"But it's up to me as a Jedi to change the universe for the better. Why should I begin by accepting injustice?"

Whatever he had expected to come round to - if at all - it was not a philosophical argument. And yet, why not? _When did I forget that the Jedi are negotiators first, and warriors only when we fail?_

"You've trussed me here so we can _talk_?"

"So that we can _all_ talk, Master Kenobi." Dooku strolled into the room and instantly became its focus. Like Anakin, he affected the darkest brown the Order would permit, and there were winks of silver at his belt and the closure of his black cloak. If Death had a voice it would be his - brandy smooth and faintly ironic. "You're being restrained only so that you don't do something drastic, like try to kill me on sight."

There was no weapon in the room, except for Qui-Gon and Dooku's sabres. Obi-Wan doubted he could call one to him against its owner's will. He had to agree that immediate violence was ruled out. "Is Anakin all right?" he asked, diverting their attention while he examined the restraints with the Force.

"The Natives weapons induce a very deep state of sleep." Younger, Dooku's movements had less deliberate majesty about them, but still a drifting, weightless grace. He had picked up a thin cushion of purple sept-silk from a divan, and now lifted Anakin's unresisting head with detached tenderness, to place the pillow beneath it. "He'll wake soon, unharmed. You need not be troubled."

But Obi-Wan was troubled. The tiny gesture of compassion troubled him. "Why didn't you just kill us?" he said, more afraid of this kindness than he had ever been of threat. "You must know that the Council has condemned you. You have no future with the Jedi. Why this charade?"

Dooku brushed the dust off a seat and sat neatly, eyes dark but hot as coals. "I would have been content to destroy you, Master Kenobi. You are a hired killer with just enough conscience to feel distaste for your work, but not enough to stop. All too common a thing in the Jedi these days." He spread his elegant hands on the table, patting it into place, "But I understand that this is no longer my mission. It is Qui-Gon's. His trial, his decision, his responsibility. I step aside for him."

With a glance of gratitude to Dooku, Qui-Gon drew a chair up to the table, propped his elbows on the exquisite ivory surface and opened the argument with all the naivety of a Padawan debating into the night in the safety of the Temple Library. "You do agree, Master Kenobi, that Jedi are servants of the Light?"

"Of course."

"And that killing a man, who hasn't done anything wrong, must be an evil act."

The sad thing was that Obi-Wan could not deny this. He knew he had come back into the past to do evil, to perpetrate an injustice, to murder an innocent. He hated it, but he believed with all his heart that it was necessary. "It is immoral, yes, but it will prevent much greater evil in the future. The overall good of the Galaxy is served."

Dooku nodded slightly as at a valid point, but Qui-Gon snorted in disbelief. "I've never thought much of doing evil so that good may come." He shrugged, "The future is always changing. The good that you sacrifice for may never happen, and all you'll be left with is the evil that you did in the meantime. How can you sow evil and expect good to grow?"

"They're not plants, Qui-Gon." Obi-Wan burst out, irritated, "It's not as simple as that."

"Is it not?" Qui-Gon leaned back, the knuckles of his intertwined fists a little white - the only sign of uncertainty in his polish. "Perhaps if gardening isn't your metaphor you'd be more comfortable with maths? Have you calculated how many lives my Master's saved in his career? How many wars will rage in the next fifty years because you killed the man whom the Force chose to stop them? How many Padawans might he have trained? And how many lives would they save? And how many students might they train to go out and do good? Did you weigh all of that in your balance before you considered how much the ultimate good is served?"

The headache had been a merciful simplicity compared with this. Obi-Wan hated this - hated operating in his Master's universe, where every moral decision had to be ones own. _I am the Council's weapon._ he thought, resentfully, _If there's maths to be done they will have done it. Who am I to set my calculations above theirs?_ But still he breathed in doubt like a scent of dust. Had they really thought about it? Or had they merely chosen the simplest route?

One of the many knots loosened behind him as he gently pushed the rope with his mind. Untangling his bonds was not easy, but he would have it done soon, and then...then he would have to decide what he believed. He moved restlessly, and Dooku's head lifted. Their gazes caught. _Oh!_

Clarity looked back at him. Cooler but no less profound than his own Master's gentle serenity. His heart turned over. _He is a Jedi. Possibly a better Jedi than I am._ Dooku's eyes flicked to the slow unworking of knots behind Obi-Wan's back, and then away again, saying nothing, giving tacit permission for the escape attempt to continue. _Why?_ He had not imagined this reality, not imagined Dooku to be someone...admirable, _Because he believes that by the time I succeed, I will have been persuaded._

"You promised, Qui-Gon," he said, lost on this ocean of doubt in a small, sinking boat of certainty, "To do whatever was required to prevent the future I showed you from coming to pass. That is still your duty."

"I know." Qui-Gon had not followed the exchange of glances, looking at Anakin quizzically, "But have you thought of this - your mere presence here has already changed the future. Neither Master Dooku nor myself can now live the lives we would have done, if we had not known. Isn't that right, Master?"

"I never imagined what my studies of the Sith would lead me to." Dooku said simply, "I will of course stop them immediately."

Uncertainty rose coldly over Obi-Wan, like water. Suppose the mere warning was sufficient to change history, to save two of the greatest Masters of the Order - one from execution and one from going rogue? Wouldn't that take away from the assassination even the thin justification it already had? "How am I to know if it's enough? Qui-Gon, we're talking about Republic Civil War here. If Dooku dies that will not happen. I can't abandon that knowledge on a faint hope that everyone will be reasonable."

"There is...something else...you can do with this time travelling ability to make it more likely that it won't happen." Qui-Gon shifted in his seat, licked his lips nervously. In the midst of moral dilemma Padawan Jinn's unease was a revelation to Obi-Wan - he'd never seen his Master look embarrassed before. It was strange to see a new expression on the familiar face. _Embarrassed...at suggesting a solution to this mess? Or at what the solution is?_ "Then for the Force's sake tell me!"

"You said that Master Dooku left the Order as a reaction to my death?"

Qui-Gon's voice was mild, self-effacing, distant from what he was going to say. Big hands pushed flat against the table top as he braced himself to look straight at Obi-Wan. His eyes were sky-coloured, full of shame and certainty, and at the contact something in Obi-Wan stilled. Suspense held the very flames frozen in the hearth, outlined the luminous shadow of the water jug, the bent ebony head of Dooku and the fallow glint of Anakin's golden hair in a glow of meaning. _I know what he's going to say, but I can't bear it._ Obi-Wan had lived with loss for so long that to take it away would be to unmake himself. He wanted it so much that it could not be - _could *not* be_ what the Force also wanted. The universe was not kind. It did not give second chances. _You must be wrong, Qui-Gon. You must be._

But when had the Force, or his Master, ever let fear stand in his way? Qui-Gon took a deep breath and finished, "Then perhaps, instead of killing Master Dooku, you can redeem the future by going a little further forward and saving the life of Master Jinn."

* * *

Anakin wiped sweaty palms down the coarse wool of his tunic skirts. The Sith was coming. The Force folded and wavered before it, as if the air quavered with heat. It approached exactly as the monster does in dreams - unseen but heralded by terror.

Settling the bowcaster back on his shoulder he tried to relax. But he felt lightheaded, fractured as if his body knew it was nothing more than a shadow of a future which should now never come to be. He was displaced, unreal.

 _But just real enough._ Anakin gritted his teeth - the decking was like sand under his knees as he remembered the desiccating inferno of Tatooine's two suns on the small pile of dirt which was his mother's grave. _Just real enough to fulfil a promise._

A lifetime's nightmares about the moment of Qui-Gon's death had not left him prepared to face it, he thought as he crouched in a dark corner of the reactor room. Nor could memory of Maul's aura lessen the impact of its truth. If anything, it added the torment of a long ache to the brutal, raw hammering of evil that now drew near.

Footsteps approached - the slide and uneven pattern of speed and caution. The hum of a Jedi's sabre and the buzz-saw whine of a second weapon. Maul swooped into Anakin's vision like a gor-crow - a swirl, snap and settle of black wings behind the crimson blaze of laser wall. Under jagged tattoos the blood red face was bizarrely handsome.

Maul's yellow, demonic eyes flashed as the walls cycled, trapping him in a prison of flame. Caged though he was, he continued the battle with a new arsenal - a spiritual warfare. Anakin's emotions were flayed with the mere backwash of the hatred, contempt, and bloodlust the Sith poured over Qui-Gon. Maul was well named, Anakin thought, struggling with echoes of his own fury, just to be in his presence was to be crushed.

Qui-Gon looked tired, but unimpressed. In this duel at least he was the Master. Kneeling, he closed his eyes, squared his shoulders and let the darkness simply roll off him. At the centre of the nightmare, surely foreknowing his own death, Qui-Gon's force signature filled with absolute, placed contentment, finding peace as easily as if he meditated in summer rain.

At the sight of it - cool, insouciant, magnificent - some of the Sith's power over Anakin eased, and his heart filled with exultation. _*That* is what a Jedi is. *That* is what I want to be. Maul is not taking that away from me this time._

The walls pulsed and fell, the combatants surged forward, intent on each other. Far down the end of the passage Padawan Kenobi - a flame of guilt and fury - launched himself like a starfighter toward the frey. And Anakin lifted the bowcaster, let the Force take his awe and use it to move his hands, firing on instinct, without aiming.

Maul saw the bolt coming - he turned, deflected. Warned by the Force, Anakin was already diving out of the way as the ricocheted blaze smashed the bowcaster out of his hands and scored a long, carbon black scar in the wall. _Close!_

But the moment's distraction had been enough. Unsurprised, fully in the moment, Qui-Gon had begun moving at the same time the trigger was pulled. Now the green blade came down. Fast as he was, Maul could not quite turn back in time - he was severed in half from shoulder to hip. He died puzzled, as if he knew he'd been cheated but couldn't work out how.

"Master!" The energy relays cycled off, and Obi-Wan came plunging wildly into the small chamber. Obi-Wan's pure young face was another image straight from Anakin's recurring nightmares - intent and righteous as it had been when he warned Qui-Gon that Anakin was too dangerous to train. _Chuuba!_ Relief swept over Anakin like anaesthetic on a burn. All his life, it seemed, he had been running flat out to try and outdistance Obi-Wan's forebodings. Now that was over. More than over. It would never happen at all. He bit down on ridiculous, childish tears of thankfulness.

"He almost killed you, Master!" Obi-Wan was saying in tones of reproach Anakin knew well. "Why did you go forward? Why didn't you wait for me?"

Qui-Gon essayed a half shrug, "The Sith are trained aggressively, Obi-Wan. I had to keep him on the defensive to stand any chance at all."

"You almost... If it hadn't been for that shot..." Obi-Wan was pacing, passionate with adrenaline, now he spun round suspiciously. "And where did that come from anyway?"

Anakin yearned to step forward into the light, to rub the arrogant young padawan's nose in the fact that here he was, trained and almost knighted. It would have been a subtle revenge on years of imagined rejection. But he did not. Obi-Wan's curious presence would lead to too many questions, too much time spent in a place where he felt more frayed second by second. Besides, Obi-Wan would be an obstacle to his private mission.

Qui-Gon put himself in the path of his padawan's restlessness. Stopping Obi-Wan's pacing he grasped both of his arms. "Do you hear that?"

The sound of far off cheering echoed along the metal walls with a roar like a distant ocean. "I think we won."

"Obi-Wan, can I ask you to make the first report to the Council? There is someone here I need to speak to."

"And I'm not to know who it is?"

Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow, and the smile which had been lurking in his eyes now spread to his mouth. "I think it would be better not."

Obi-Wan's tense face relaxed into a teasing grin, "One of your more unsavory friends?"

"You might say so."

Obi-Wan bowed and arrowed away, light and swift. Silence fell. The sand and cream of his retreating form were a glimmer in the distance before Qui-Gon stirred again, looking over his shoulder and saying softly, "Anakin?"

Anakin came out of the shadows tentatively. This was strange. Very strange. Only an hour ago he had said goodbye to Padawan Jinn, and now that willowy innocent had become a venerable Master quietened and wearied by endurance. _Do I even know you?_

"So this was when I died?" The faint hint of inappropriate amusement was familiar though. Anakin didn't know what to say to it. Master Jinn seemed so unmoved by the idea - as accepting as he had been of the Force-Storm, or Anakin's virtual confession that he was a failure in Obi-Wan's eyes. Anakin felt both vulnerable and oddly sheltered, knowing that Qui-Gon knew these secrets and wanted him anyway.

He nodded and nudged the Sith's body with his foot. It was remarkably inoffensive - the lightsabre was a tidy weapon. "I guess you passed your Trials then," he countered, lamely, relaxing a little.

****

Flash on deep space and the remnants of explosion - a billion tumbling pieces of debris twinkling in the orbit of a beautiful opal of a world. Joy and certainty and homecoming.

****

"My Trials?" Qui-Gon snorted with soft laughter, "Well, it was a near thing. Eventually they had to concede that as I'd negotiated a peaceful outcome to a no-win situation, saving lives and preventing injustice in the process, they couldn't very well fail me. But I don't think my solution made anyone very happy." The chuckle devolved into a wry grimace, "And I've always felt that the status was more or less provisional, depending on what happens in the next ten years."

Anakin rubbed his forehead. For a moment the room had disappeared and he was back there, joyriding in a Naboo Starfighter - nothing but a boy with faith in his bright future. "Did you...?"

But Qui-Gon could not have sensed anything. He had knelt beside Maul and was closing the Sith's staring eyes.

"Your solution made _me_ happy," Anakin said, not sure whether he was giving reassurance or asking for it. "Did you suggest it because - or well, partly because - I said I wished I had a different Master?"

Qui-Gon's hand rested on Maul's horned crown - his knuckles bruised from fighting, his touch gentle. "It _was_ a factor. You conceal things from Obi-Wan. And he fears you." The disarming sideways smile, "I wanted to put that right, if I could."

Something tightly wound in Anakin released suddenly, making him feel dizzy. He sank down with his back to the wall, exhausted as if he had spent a day marching. "How's Master Dooku?"

"Do you mean 'is he exhibiting any worrying Darkside tendencies?'" The shape of Qui-Gon's smile altered slightly, and his aquamarine eyes filled with humour. "That's an Obi-Wan question, isn't it?"

"Yes, and yes." When Anakin relaxed he could feel the boy - his other self. He was returning now from the greatest thrill of his life. This time it would not be to tragedy and guilt. He would not return to the knowledge that Jedi do indeed die, or the fury that he had been abandoned by the man he had begun to think of as a father. This time he was returning to triumph.

"Master Dooku is restless and impatient with both the Senate's corruption and the Council's...ah... _caution_. But then so am I. It's not a guarantee that he's going to become a ravening monster in the next decade." Qui-Gon was looking at him strangely. There was a question and a caution behind the Master's Jedi calm. Anakin shook himself - this was not the moment to face those uncertainties. Time was running out. He had to ask now.

 _I promised Mom. I promised Padme I would grow strong enough to stop those I love from dying. I'm gonna keep that promise. That little kid is never gonna have to face the things I've seen._ "Master Jinn?"

Qui-Gon edged over to sit beside him, attentive, unpressuring. "Hmn?"

"What you said about saving lives..." sowing good instead of evil, "What if I was to ask you to save someone who died in my lifetime?" 'Playing with Destiny', Obi-Wan would call it. Reckless, thoughtless, dangerous.

"It seems to me I am the last person who could object to that."

Breathing was hard now - Anakin's two bodies clashing, his heart trying to race with a child's exultation. For a moment he saw only the great brightness of the hangar and he was terrified that he had waited too long to speak. "When I start having dreams about my Mom, suffering..." Rage thundered through him like the blast of a starship's afterburners.

****

One of the other pilots caught him up, throwing him into the air. He was caught and carried, part of a huge rejoicing, his small voice uncertain. "Does anyone know if Padm..the Queen's OK? And Master Qui-Gon?"

****

Qui-Gon's tug on his arm brought him back to himself. "Time you were going, Padawan. You phased out on me there."

"No! I gotta tell you. Those dreams are prophetic, Master Jinn. If we don't save her my Mom will die. Promise me you'll save her. Please!"

****

"It's OK, Kid." A lady pilot, her lipstick smudged from celebratory kissing, looked up from her comlink, eyes bright with glory. "The Queen's got the snake-heads trapped in the throne room. And the Jedi are both fine. We did it!"

****

Reality shifted, and Anakin felt the hand which supported him waver in and out of solidity. Or perhaps it was himself fading - the ghost of an alternate future.

Watching him, Qui-Gon looked startled for a moment, and then resolute. "I swear it, Anakin. Unless the Force forbids me, I will not let Shmi die...It's the least I can do."

At the oath, Anakin felt unravelled and strangely light. A boy's perfect happiness was washing out his being. He should be panicking, but he could not.

****

He took the corridors at a run, following the faint light and sense of home that spelled Qui-Gon in his mind. He was no longer afraid of the future - together they had defeated the Trade Federation's army - a little matter like the Jedi Council's disapproval would pose no threat. At this moment he was unconquerable.

****

Anakin tried to concentrate, to take himself back to his own time, but he could not gather his mind into quietness. A stir of fear began and was snuffed out by the boy's confidence.

"What's happening to me, Master Jinn?" He tried for horror but could find only excitement. When he reached a metal and piston hand for Qui-Gon's sleeve it passed through.

Qui-Gon took a while to consider the question, but he moved closer until Anakin could - sometimes - feel the press of a firm shoulder against his.

****

Standing at the end of a long corridor lined with red laser gates Anakin paused, impatient. There was a dark shape on the floor in the chamber beyond, and something important was happening, something he could almost feel pulsing in his blood. _What's going on?_

****

"I think you are about to be reborn, Padawan." Qui-Gon said, throwing long arms around him. He - just- felt the hug, insubstantial but warm, before time ran out.

"Tell Padme I love her."

The dimensional anomaly settled itself, and he was gone.

****

"Are you OK, Qui-Gon sir?" Anakin slid to a halt in the chamber, breathing hard and looking around for a threat. The Jedi Master looked up at him with enigmatic eyes. He thought he saw sadness, but in the next heartbeat it had become welcome.

"I'm fine Anakin. I was just waiting for you."

* * *

Obi-Wan's knees buckled. The Galaxy swirled in his stomach. Council members' faces dipped and swayed as if - stoically disapproving, of course - they rode some infernal fairground ride. Collapsing, the wine coloured marble of the Council chamber floor unyielding under his damp hands, he fought the nausea and the life-or-death terror that told him some part of himself was about to perish.

"Knight Kenobi? Are you ill?" That was Evan Piell's voice, more accusing than sympathetic.

 _Am I ill?_ Self respect would not allow Obi-Wan to lie limp as a mechanic's oil rag on the Chamber's central star. He pulled himself gingerly into seiza. _I suppose you could call it that._ Probing gently at his mind revealed something alien embedded there - a second consciousness, trying to expand, to take over. Thought was blurred and doubled as if he'd put on someone else's optical correction device and was straining his inner eye to make it fit.

"Ill he is not. Returned he has."

"Returned?" Piell scoffed, "There's been no time."

"Outside our time, Knight Kenobi has been."

Obi-Wan looked up, saw Yoda, strange as an ancient jade amulet and just as unchanging. He brought his panicked breathing under control - both of him agreeing that he should be face this with calm. "Master Yoda." Forcing his body to ignore its inaccurate feelings of drunkenness he stood up, bowed slightly - the room reeled and migraine spiked behind his eyes - and catalogued the faces that examined him so minutely.

Coleman Trebor inclined a gargoyle head to his examination. Master Gallia smiled, and Yareal Poof merely swayed; gentle as a polyp under water. Obi-Wan closed his eyes. _Thank the Force!_ All the Councillors who had died on Geonosis were still present, unperturbed, uninjured. "My Masters. You're alive! It worked."

Anakin's absence at his shoulder was - to his shame - another relief; the absence of a vibro-axe hanging by a cobweb over his head. _But he'll be happier with Qui-Gon. I'll go and find them when this is over. We have so much to talk about._

A darkness eluded him at the thought. Echoes of old abandonment and fury swept over him like the huge cold shade of a Kamino whale. "What...?"

"Hm." Master Yoda traced an invisible letter on the floor with his stick. "Different this universe has been from yours, since Qui-Gon's trials. Success or failure? Difficult to say. Trouble you are having?"

"My head. I...It hurts. I don't know what's real."

Yoda chuckled, like a tumble of small stones, "Lived the past ten years twice you have. Two Obi-Wan Kenobis there are in there. Crowded it is, yes?"

Leaning forward with his wizened face gone harsh, Yoda switched typically from playful to stern. "Meditate you must. Discard what is now false. But first Geonosis, the Separatists."

He pointed toward the shadow behind Saesee Tiin's chair. "Stand there. Watch."

* * *

"They led me on a tour of the whole facility." Outside the chamber twilight was water-grey and argent. Running lights dappled the high arched windows, and speeders shuttled past, weaving glory like a mechanical loom threaded with light.

A chair had been brought for Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. He sat next to Obi-Wan, the lights of his city sliding hypnotically across his face. Normally plump and genial he looked white, drawn, and his pale lips were set hard in a line of anger.

The reporting knight - a young Bothan - was sleek and charcoal grey, her fur patterned with silver, like the night. "The Geonosians appeared _pleased_ by my interest, and were unfailingly courteous."

So the memory of the winged aliens swarming over Obi-Wan's execution like flies over a carcass would have to be discarded. With a feeling of slight achievement Obi-Wan marked it as false and turned back to the woman's report, fascinated.

"I was obviously not allowed to come away with numbers. However, I saw basic and advanced Battle Droids - a little like those the Trade Federation use, but faster and more intelligent. I also saw starfighters, both manned and droid."

She bared her teeth at the Councillors in a disconcerting smile. "There seemed to be more weapons in production than there were droids to carry them. When I asked Master...um... _Count_ Dooku about this he said that even the ordinary citizens of his Alliance wished to fight for their liberty, and he was equipping them to do so."

Horror filled the room like a scent at the idea of using innocent sentients as _soldiers_. That was what droids were for. The Republic's clone army had been blasphemy enough.

Obi-Wan breathed in through the nose, filling his chest with the taste of blame and guilt. The taste of failure, the taste of shame. _I should have killed him. I allowed my personal feelings to persuade me otherwise. I am responsible for this._

He held the breath, and the despair, for a moment, then opened his mouth and let it go. _I accept the past. And I will do better in the future._

Dooku had still cast off the Jedi, and the Separatist threat was no less. Obi-Wan breathed again, forgiving himself. _Yet my actions did save the lives of two hundred Jedi on Geonosis. That is not inconsiderable._

A calf muscle cramped from standing motionless so long. He isolated and flexed it, frowning. Something else was different too - a symptom of the same basic change. Knight Osla had been welcomed; had been allowed to tour the weapons factory and come away unhindered, when Obi-Wan had been condemned as a spy. Why? Was Dooku so confident that he could now afford to _flaunt_ his army in the Republic's face?

"So," Palpatine stood, his heavy robes - Imperial purple worked with platinum thread - pooling extravagantly around his feet. "There can be no doubt that the Separatists are preparing for war. Count Dooku and their other leaders may pretend to idealism all they wish, but their actions condemn them."

"If the Council will forgive me for expressing an opinion?" The Bothan Knight's fur had risen along her neck at having the temerity to speak without permission, but her voice was steady. "Count Dooku said that the army existed for defence only. 'War may come,' he said, 'In which case we are ready to defend ourselves. But we will not make the first move.' It seemed to me that he was sincere."

"Child," Chancellor Palpatine bestowed an uncle's fond smile on her, "An appearance of sincerity is the first thing any politician learns. And your Master Dooku is adept at shielding, I'm sure."

He processed into the centre of the room. A pleasant man, dealing with a situation which distressed him by adding a touch of majesty to his normally humble stance. His shoulders, which had been bowed under responsibility, straightened as he braced himself to take action. "I don't believe, after hearing this, that we need to speak to the so-called _Ambassador_ of the Separatists at all. What can he give us, except more lies?"

Pressure mounted in Obi-Wan's head. _You're right, Chancellor. And I will never listen to Dooku's lies again._ He had to close his eyes, fighting the abyssal grip of another lifetime. He was an explorer in the deep. Outside another universe pushed against the bubble of his light, and as the cracks began he was afraid.

*****

Standing in the cool twilight of Qui-Gon's rooms, Obi-Wan fingered the stub of hair behind his ear and tried not to feel afraid, or abandoned. He could manage it only by resorting to anger.

On the couch lay the small form of a sleeping boy, fair hair like dust on the hard cushions, a Master's robe tangled like newborn swaddling around him. One of the bed-quilts had been doubled over him yet still he shivered in his sleep.

Movement by Obi-Wan's side. If he reached out his fingers would tangle in the worn warmth of Qui-Gon's tunics - harsh linen beaten into softness by long use. Suddenly he wanted to do it - grab the man, shake him, tell him to stop being so stupid. _As if that would help. As if he'd ever listen._

"This is very ancient, Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon's bruised hands cupped a ceramic planter, within which the radiant blue leaves of a Dagoban aeon-palm unfolded with fragile hope. "It came to the Temple with Master Yoda, when he was chosen as an initiate. From him to his Padawan, from my Master to me.... Look after it?"

There was a brokenness to the way Qui-Gon moved. A careful silence about him. Obi-Wan's braid, harvest-gold, made an incongruous bracelet around one lean wrist.

 _Why? Why are you doing this to yourself? And us? And me?_ Obi-Wan wanted to take the living heirloom and break it against the wall - his knuckles ached with the tension of his fists. "Don't do it, Master."

Qui-Gon's gaze was the bleak blue of Hoth. "I don't act of my own choice, Obi-Wan, believe me. There is no other way."

*****

Smothering a gasp, Obi-Wan recoiled from the memory, thankful to see that nothing had changed in the Council Chamber. Like a dream the memory had taken no more time than a pulsebeat. _What happened?_

The scene had left him hollow, just as he had felt when Qui-Gon died. _But he isn't dead!_

Obi-Wan could feel a dark confluence between his two pasts. As if some power had been determined to remove his ...father... from his life, and no amount of struggle could make him stay. _Perhaps I was meant to be alone._ After a day of hoping differently, grief and anger were eloquent, yet he could not pin their accusations down. _But I don't understand why._

"Chancellor Palpatine," Mace Windu leaned forward with a weary smile. "Let it not be said that we were not open to negotiation. If the Separatists have sent an ambassador..."

"'Ambassador!'" Obi-Wan could not remember seeing Palpatine so outraged. He had the look of an honest man cheated by a charity he had long supported. "As if their systems had already seceded. As if they had some sort of legitimacy."

"'Messenger' then." Master Windu said, soothingly, "Supreme Chancellor, you are a fair man. Surely there is still a way to resolve this in peace. I cannot believe that peace is not also what they desire. The movement cannot have fallen so far from Jedi ideals." He rose, coming to stand beside Palpatine in a show of reassurance and solidarity. "After all, if war was what they wanted, why would they have sent someone to talk?"

Palpatine looked frail beside Mace's warrior strength, but took the Jedi Master's support with grace. "Forgive me, my friend. It is hard to see the Republic under threat and remain emotionless. I do not have the advantage of your training." Sincerity was a warm undercurrent in his light tones, "But of course I will take any chance to resolve this amicably. I am no war-monger. Let the man come in."

Obi-Wan, hands concealed in his sleeves, rubbed his wrists nervously. They tingled as if he heard Dooku's words in his skin, beneath the snapping charge of restraints. After his failure, after being persuaded once too often by that plausible voice, he didn't want to meet the man again, ever. He steadied himself. The fear was foolish and unworthy of him. _Besides, Dooku will just have sent some dupe of his. Rune Haako, or..._

The Council Chamber's doors opened and the Separatist's 'ambassador' came in. It was Qui-Gon Jinn.

_No!_

Long years of practice kept Obi-Wan still, his face neutral as the sheer magnitude of his error crashed into him. _I should have known. I should have known the moment he took his Master's part at his Trials._

The hands that encircled his wrists had tightened, and new-moon cuts were opening beneath his fingernails as he gripped. He could not feel surprise - some part of him had already known this - only the crushing weight of loss and responsibility. _But for my meddling he would at least have died a hero's death. Rather that than survive as the lackey of a traitor._

_Oh Force. No!_

"Lord Jinn." Mace inclined his head in a stiff bow that spoke of worlds of discomfort.

Qui-Gon returned it with assurance and a slight smile, "I'm no Lord, Mace. You know that." Alert for threat, as always, he swept the room with a careful gaze, stopping, surprised, at Obi-Wan. A step, and the hard-planed face softened. "Knight Kenobi?"

He was little changed - his hair perhaps more salt than pepper now, his eyes more lined but no less tranquil. Though he looked more like a Tatooine farmer than a warlord there was still a lightsabre hilt at his hip.

"Padawan?"

 _No._ Pointedly, silently, Obi-Wan looked away.

"No Master are you either." Yoda's voice was thick with disappointment, and his small form huddled together in the egg-shaped chair as if chilled, or finally aware of ruinous age.

_And I am not the only one to feel this anguish. Oh, Master, why?_

* * *

Qui-Gon sighed and rubbed the break of his nose. "I didn't really come here to discuss my status, Councillor Yoda."

"Master you call yourself, yet stripped from you that rank was. Deserve it you do not. Abandoned us you did."

Obi-Wan remembered how Yoda had always brought out the worst in Qui-Gon. That too did not seem to have changed. Qui-Gon's head was high, his gaze defiant, defensive; "What Mastery I have the Force has bestowed on me. The Council has no power to take it away. And I did not abandon anyone. I kept my oaths in the only way I could."

Ten years older, and with the experience of bringing up a child, Obi-Wan could now see the thwarted affection that embittered their philosophical differences. He saw too, disconcertingly, how much like Anakin Qui-Gon was - reacting to accusation with arrogance. _Because he feels he should be trusted, far beyond reason._

Easing his grip away from the new bruises on his forearms, Obi-Wan reminded himself that this was a new universe of which he yet remembered little. The only constant between his two lives was an adolescence in which Qui-Gon had deserved his trust. _There have been situations before where I thought the worst of him, only to find his actions bore another explanation. I will not condemn until I understand._ Still it wasn't easy to see his Master as an outcast and not to feel betrayed.

"You made one too many demands on the Council's patience." Mace Windu's polished teak face was carved with a weary smile, "The Skywalker boy. Your disobedience, your unfounded accusations. Sedition. You were ungovernable. You must have known we would not go along with you forever."

"I was warned, yes." Qui-Gon's gaze slid sideways to Obi-Wan, inviting him to share the joke. When Obi-Wan did not turn away a second time his whole posture softened in relief. There was a fugitive ...apology? No - Qui-Gon did not apologize. A request for absolution, behind his eyes as he said "But what else could I do?"

"So." Yoda's scorn was as considerable as his skill with a sabre, paternal, personal. "Leave rather than obey you do. Beyond you it is to consider others wiser than yourself? Your own Council you become. Your rules everyone else must follow. Obedient they must be to _you_ , yes?"

Unexpectedly, Qui-Gon laughed aloud. "Oh, Master Yoda, if you knew my students! Obedience is the last thing I get from any of them."

Obi-Wan found the laughter disturbing. _He's changed._ A potent reminder that a decade of new life stood between him and his memories of his Master. Qui-Gon had not laughed so easily in the past. _And what does he mean by 'my students'?_ Disoriented by strangeness, Obi-Wan's head hurt, and cracks widened in his shields against the new universe. A memory slipped through, vibrant and all consuming as life.

*****

The initiates fought impeccably, their rounded, childish faces solemn, their spirits indomitable. Initiate Ythei, losing, mastered his disappointment in a breath; steady, placid.

"A credit to the Temple." Knight Tralantha's enthusiasm was decorous, as measured and acceptable as everything else about her.

"You're thinking of taking him as a Padawan?" Obi-Wan leaned back on the spectator's bench and tried not to feel uneasy. This place, this procedure brought back too many desperate memories. He could not help comparing his own aggression with Ythei's calm. As a child he had thought the bouts were all about winning. No wonder no one had selected him.

"Yes, I think I will." Tralantha's teal-coloured eyes filled with mocking pleasure. She smoothed her stola reflectively. "Have you heard what your ex-Master has been up to now?"

Obi-Wan sighed - he didn't need this, but gossip was one of Tralantha's accepted vices, and he could find no polite way of turning it away. "They say he's opened his own Temple. The Separatists are training their own Jedi."

 _Ridiculous._ "That has to be just a rumour." He shook his head. The notion was simply unthinkable. "Where would he get the money for a start?"

She shrugged elegantly, "Master Dooku is independently wealthy."

"But the initiates? There are barely enough infants to come to Coruscant."

She beamed at him, a trained diplomat's smile underlain by malice. "That's the scandal of it. He's taking adults. Beggars from the Outer Rim, farmers from the Agricorps. All the freaks and rejects!" She laughed and rose without haste to go find her new Padawan. "I don't think we need to fear such competition, do you?"

Obi-Wan leaned his head against the wall and tried to work out what he should feel about this news. Horror at the risk of all those potential darksiders set loose on the galaxy? Worry for the future of his own Order? Familiar exasperation at Qui-Gon's impossibilities? Whatever it was, it was probably not appropriate to be glad for all those lost children given a second chance to realize their dreams.

*****

"Ah, yes," Chancellor Palpatine's cool silk smile recalled Obi-Wan to the present once more. "And how are your mongrel Jedi, Lord Jinn?"

Qui-Gon's gaze was not without respect, but it had an implacability behind it which Obi-Wan had only seen in him before when he faced Maul. "Nor did I come here to discuss the new Jedi Order, Supreme Chancellor, though I see you seem to have become an honorary member of the old."

"Our mutual dedication to the survival of the Republic makes it important in this time of threat that we act in concert." Palpatine circled Qui-Gon like a battle-moon around an ill-omened star.

"The Separatist movement poses no threat."

"Oh. Armies you build, yet 'no threat' you claim? Unconvincing you are, my Padawan's Padawan."

Qui-Gon's brows drew together in a look of incredulity. "Our droid army was built within the last year. The Republic's clone army took ten years to grow. Surely it must be clear to you which came first? Yours is the threat, ours is merely the response."

The logic of this was like a hammer-blow on Obi-Wan's memories. The bubble shattered and the sea burst in. Pressure, salt, darkness and a struggle to breathe. A vein burst in his nose. He stanched the flow with his sleeve and gasped quietly, open mouthed, trying to accept the new knowledge without allowing it to obliterate him.

When he opened his eyes again it was with a different past. He could remember long years of solitary missions. A peace and growing emptiness. Successes of diplomacy or battle somehow always mutating under the Senate's interference into evil. Condolences from friends who felt the same - no matter how hard they swam the current always washed out any good they achieved. Trying harder, achieving less, and not knowing how to stop.

The memories of his other life remained only as dreams - a gauze he could focus on or brush through at will. When he looked at his Master once more it was almost with envy: a feeling that one of them at least had managed to escape. _But that's not it at all. He has abandoned his duty, and I have not._

"The point," Mace's scowl was ferocious, "Is that you speak for an Alliance of systems which have illegally separated themselves from the government of the Republic, and are now illegally raising an army against the forces of Law and Order."

"Mace, all we desire is peace and justice. A Jedi's desire. I don't understand how this is a threat to anyone."

"If that's what you want then you should be here, with us. Why did you give up on us, Qui-Gon? Why aren't you fighting for those things here?"

_Yes. Why?_

Qui-Gon sighed again and looked thoughtfully at Palpatine. The Supreme Chancellor had turned and was now staring out into the darkness and fugitive lights, hands clasped behind his back. "Corruption is now so embedded in the Republic," Qui-Gon said sadly, "That I no longer believe it can be saved."

"Chancellor Palpatine has worked tirelessly to turn back the tide of decay," Coleman Trebor burst out, the words resonating eerily in the echo-chamber of his skull.

"Has he?" said Qui-Gon harshly, "Strange then, isn't it, that he's had so little success."

The Supreme Chancellor turned, avuncular face gone cold, grey eyes, grey hair, phantom-pale. His frown etched a cross into his forehead, the lines oddly deep for someone who smiled so much. "Personal attacks now? Well, that is always the way of extremists."

"The Separatist Alliance is an attempt to salvage whatever of worth can be saved from the ruins," Qui-Gon continued, unintimidated, "A refuge, if you like, for the true spirit of the Republic."

"An illegal political movement." Mace returned to his point doggedly.

Obi-Wan took his cuff away from his nose, sniffed in the taste of copper. _What if it's true? Something in the Republic really is actively working against us. Wouldn't that explain why everything good we build seems to fall apart?_

It seemed like classic paranoia, conspiracy theory, madness. _But Qui-Gon has always had good instincts, and his arguments are valid._ Why had corruption spread so rapidly under a Chancellor who was so outspoken against it? Why had the Republic built an army before there was a threat?

"Mace, when the law itself is an instrument of evil..." Qui-Gon shrugged as if tired of explaining things he found obvious. "To remain the slave of a corrupt system, powerless to change it, is to be useless as a Jedi. Useless to the people we exist to protect." Stepping back, he looked over his shoulder for a moment at Obi-Wan, the stoic Jedi mask slipping, revealing affection and challenge. He spoke softly now, not an ambassador, but a man among friends.

"The truth is, I don't doubt war is coming. The power now in control of the Republic will see to that. But the more good people there are on the side of the Separatists the easier it will be to resist it." His smile was regretful, a little uncertain. "Join us? The new Jedi academy has a great need for properly trained teachers."

Palpatine nodded, his thinning hair making a silver halo in the Chamber's ambient light, "Now we see why you're really here. To encourage others in your treachery. To weaken the Republic by trying to steal the very guardians of our freedom. One final recruitment drive before you launch your war. Well I won't let..."

A comlink's tinny beep interrupted his passion. With a clipped, angry gesture he pulled the link from his sleeve, "I said I was not to be disturbed."

The Council waited in patient silence. "Ah." Palpatine said, his expression fading into concern. His shoulders rounded and the paper-thin flesh of his hands tightened as he gripped the device. "Of course. Of course. I'll be there immediately."

Eyes distant with shock he looked up. "Masters. Forgive me - a terrible thing has happened. An attempt on the life of Senator Organa. I must leave." The white mouth thinned. "The Separatist movement is thought to be involved. I will leave a droid to record anything the 'ambassador' wishes to say about that. We may need it for evidence."

Obi-Wan's new memories had settled now, running together like droplets of mercury to make a mirror in which he could see the past. The Chancellor's accusation seemed ridiculous - in this universe the rise of the Separatists had been a model of Jedi negotiation and subtlety. In this universe Mace's assertion that they would not be involved in assassination seemed unshakeable. Why would Palpatine say something so false?

Qui-Gon had turned to watch the flick of Palpatine's purple cloak disappear through the door. "Why?" Qui-Gon asked, turning slowly, the harsh lines of his face drawing together, cheekbones and brow shadowing the suspicion in his eyes. "Why is he leaving? Why is he not - at the very least - having me arrested?"

"You want to be arrested, Qui-Gon?" Mace sounded amused, as if he could afford some latitude now the maverick was no longer his problem. "I wouldn't have put you down as a martyr to any cause."

"No. And I made preparations to avoid it." Qui-Gon closed his eyes, obviously focussing, shaken by the Chancellor's mercy. At the sight, terror fell irrationally into the reflecting pool of Obi-Wan's mind. His body jerked with it - so strong, so primal it could not be the muddied sediment of his stirred-together lives. It could only be the Force. A warning, adamant, unshakeable.

Gasping, the light flared in his eyes, and he caught Qui-Gon staring at him in shared certainty. "You feel it?"

"Yes!"

"Danger I sense also. What...?"

Qui-Gon had begun to pace through the room, puzzled gaze raking the walls, the windows, shadowed places. Protest and then a stillness fell uncomfortably on the Councillors as they felt the danger and turned inwards to find the source.

"Palpatine wants war." Soft, wondering, Qui-Gon's tone was that of a hunter, closing in on the truth as if it were a skittish animal. "He has the entire Jedi Council in one room. With a Separatist scapegoat."

Without the Force screaming warning in his blood Obi-Wan might have sneered at this as rampant paranoia. Now, however...

"A martyr to a terrorist cause."

"This is scare mongering," Coleman Trebor began, but Mace hushed him with a look.

"And Palpatine is conveniently called away." There was no triumph or urgency in Qui-Gon at all, only the emptiness of battle, "'What a blessing'" he quoted sarcastically, "'That though the Jedi were made leaderless the Supreme Chancellor survived. We must avenge this cowardly act at once.'"

Obi-Wan's own voice was colourless as he drew the unthinkable conclusion, "There's a bomb in the room." Caught in a torrent of Force everything seemed slowed - Plo Koon rising to his feet, Mace's knuckles tightening, Yoda's ears pricking as he turned his head, scenting the peril. _Where?_ Thoughts flowed at lightspeed, _We would notice a difference, whether in the Chamber or the people._

The bomber - he still found it hard to believe it could be Palpatine himself - knew he was dealing with Jedi. Must have researched their limitations. _We cannot mind control, or influence, or even sense the thoughts of... *droids*._ "It's in the droid!"

Qui-Gon's expression did not waver. He moved as if divorced from will or thought. The droid was on the floor in two pieces before the end of Obi-Wan's sentence. Obi-Wan found himself kneeling beside it, poking through wires even as the first Council member reached the doors and found them locked.

Battle focus felt good, abandoning everyday confusions, paring down to a place that was pure.

He found the contacts - hairlike, practically invisible even to an eye trained to search. "How could you have overlooked this, Master?" he grinned up at Qui-Gon, who returned a look of long-suffering patience. It was not the time to consider, but - Force! - that too was good. He had missed this. Not the danger, exactly, but facing it with someone reliable beside him, someone whose competence and concentration he did not have to constantly doubt.

Following the wires brought him to the bomb itself. His joy stalled as if plunged in liquid oxygen. Touching the device would set it off. The heat of a sabre would set it off, and it was powerful enough to take out the entire top of the tower.

The Council Chamber doors were lightsabre resistant, thick as a safe. Even against the full might of twelve Masters they would stand perhaps a minute. And the bomb's counter was set to go off in seven seconds.

"Shades of Bandomeer." Obi-Wan said, feeling as then an odd satisfaction at letting go, even pleasure that their paths had come full circle. _Closing the circle._ But Qui-Gon was not looking at him, he had sprinted forward and made a huge cross cut in one window.

As the shards fell, the thin air of Coruscant's upper atmosphere hissed and whistled in the chamber. Qui-Gon shouted for his apprentice. "Anakin!"

And there the boy was, skidding into view on a souped up swoop. He must have been waiting outside all this while. _Qui-Gon's 'preparation'_ Obi-Wan realized, _His escape route in case we really did try to arrest him._

Anakin vaulted across the five mile drop, landing sturdily on a mosaic flower. "Master?"

It was a strange relief to Obi-Wan, seeing him again. He looked well. But there was no time for sentiment. _What exactly does Qui-Gon hope to achieve, bringing Anakin into this?_ Instinctively, Obi-Wan shouted out, "There's a bomb in the droid, my Padawan."

To his credit Anakin's blink of surprise was instant, instantly discarded. He looked to Qui-Gon.

"Dampen the blast, Anakin."

"I don't know how!"

Qui-Gon threw his cloak over the droid - a visual reference. "Then make something up."

Anakin gulped. Facing the fallen bundle from a pace or so away he rooted himself, spread his arms, preparing to counter the explosion with the power in his own slim body.

Opposite him Qui-Gon took up a mirroring stance. Their arms delimited a rough circle, showing physically where the perimeter lay, giving the bomb a blast radius barely metres across before it hit a shield made only of their will and the Living Force.

Obi-Wan moved at the same time as Yoda, turning in, joining that circle. "Help you we will. Too late for me to learn a new technique it is not."

Still light glinted from Anakin's finger, where he wore a golden wedding ring. It trembled once and flashed, and then the world was rent apart in a detonation of such fury the whole tower bucked beneath them. Obi-Wan's perceptions speeded, speeded, he could feel the wavefront of the explosion tearing towards him. A tidal wave that would hit and crush and annihilate him, and pass, scarcely slowed, out of the walls to rain debris on the innocents below. _I won't let that happen!_

"I see it! Upwards. Send it up!" Anakin's voice rang out, deep and young and sure. Sinking his consciousness into the Force Obi-Wan felt the blended strengths of the Jedi around him, and around them Anakin's power like the constricting arms of a Titan.

The bomb's power met their combined might. For a blast furnace instant Obi-Wan could think no further than the flaying heat. He could feel Anakin waver, almost afraid to succeed, afraid to face the implications of his monstrous, overgrown talent. _Anakin, this is no time for doubt!_ he thought, and felt the thought eddy in the maelstrom like a smudge of oil on a stormy sea.

The blast stopped at Obi-Wan's face, turned, streaming upwards. The roof burst apart with an animal-like roar. Girders shrieked and bent and Obi-Wan felt as if he was flying apart with them.

"You are exactly where you are meant to be. Doing exactly what you are meant to do in this moment. Be at peace. Be glad."

Qui-Gon's murmured words were not meant for him, he heard them only in the echo of a long dormant bond and the binding together of the Force. But he breathed them in like air long denied. _Peace in the centre of the storm. There's no doubt that, Separatist or not, he's still a Jedi._

As the heat and power slacked, broken tiles and spear-like chunks of metal fell around him. Obi-Wan stood half dazed, reeling with the implications of this attack. The wreckage of the Council chamber was now open to the sky. Stars shone dimly above.

"Well!" a mound of roof insulation lifted and was impatiently shoved aside by Yoda's small arm, "Interesting your visit has been, my Padawan's padawan."

Qui-Gon laughed again and moved to slap Anakin on the arm in congratulation. "Indeed."

"Trouble you always were."

Mysteriously unlocked, the pierced and partly melted doors lurched apart. White forms moved in the hallway's yellow light, and there was a chitinous click as blasters came down, their hot black mouths level with Qui-Gon's face.

"Much to think about, we have." Yoda continued, oblivious. He patted Qui-Gon on the shin and then stepped back, head tilted. "Worn out your welcome here you have. Next time I will visit you."

"Master." Sabre lit, but smiling, Qui-Gon stepped in front of Anakin, protecting him, as Anakin spoke into a comlink.

Mace brushed himself down and stalked - all regal elegance despite bloodstains and torn robe - towards the sterile forms of the clones. "What are you doing here?"

Behind the identical troopers in their spotless armour Senator Orn Fre Taa bulked, a decadence of colours and flesh. His shock at seeing anyone alive became an almost comical look of relief. "Oh! Master Windu! I'm so glad. And is the traitor...?" He craned his heavy head to look out into the roofless chamber.

 _Traitor._ Obi-Wan thought, watching as one of the brighter stars detached from the sky above and began drifting silently towards him. All of a sudden his disgust with politics and politicians rose up like the darkside and tried to choke him. _I'm tired of them. I didn't train to become a soldier or a politician's spy. I don't need the approval of the Senate to be a true Jedi._

"There is no traitor here," Mace began. But one of the troopers was pointing.

"There he is, Senator."

"I want him arrested. Killed, if you can't capture him. Now!"

The star had become a spaceship - its rounded burnished form like that of a muja seed. Its wake blew into the broken room, flattening hair and lifting cloaks. A tossed ladder snaked down from its floating height.

"Don't let them escape!"

As Anakin ran up the ropes the clone troopers opened fire. It didn't seem possible for him to defend himself and continue to climb, but then the Council lit their sabres one by one and began to flick the bolts out of the air.

Behind the wall of moving fire, Qui-Gon paused with his hand on the ladder. "Are you coming, Obi-Wan?"

He had no idea what decision he would make until he found himself beside his Master, clinging on to the bars of the ladder while Coruscant swung deliciously below him. Too much had happened for him to process. His understanding of the universe had been shattered and lost twice in as many hours, and he badly needed certainty, even if it was only the certainty of the heart.

The air turned cold and thin. He swarmed up the ladder. Yan Dooku offered him a hand to help him inside before returning to the controls. Qui-Gon sprawled on the floor inside the airlock looking a little shell-shocked. "That didn't go too well, did it?" he said, picking up a conversation as if the intervening ten years had never happened. "But at least the Council is now alert to the problem."

Obi-Wan breathed in and pulled himself to his feet. The little barge they travelled in was elegantly furnished, frighteningly non-standard. He felt both free and profoundly lost. What had he done? Where was he going? What was he doing here, instead of back with the Order where he belonged?

"Why?" he choked, watching Anakin slump into a chair beside the navi-comp. _Oh Force, what have I done?_

"Why what, Obi-Wan?"

 _Oh Gods!_ "Why...go outside? Why drop all your friends and allies and strike out on your own? Why the Separatists? Why...all of it?"

He was hoping for a simple answer. Something to ground and anchor him in the strangeness of his new position. Something that a Jedi could believe. He was not disappointed. Qui-Gon nodded at Dooku's poised black back. "Do you remember what my Master said to you? In your alternative universe - where he had caught you on Geonosis and was holding you captive?"

It was hard to believe that other life had actually happened, but Obi-Wan remembered it with the nauseating stab of nightmare. He nodded.

"It's very simple, Obi-Wan. Master Dooku told you the entire truth." Qui-Gon's eyes were distant in sympathy - he too must remember the moment of leaving behind his whole existence on the urgings of the Force. His tone was gentle, but his words uncompromising.

"The Senate is now the instrument of a Sith. The Jedi are the unknowing weapons of the Sith. I left, and now you have left, Obi-Wan, because we would not serve a Republic headed by a Sith."

* * *


End file.
